[spacebandit]

A study for The Annals Of Family Medicine in the United States has concluded that religious doctors care less for poor patients, and that doctors who say they are atheists actually have practices which contain a much greater percentage of poor and underserved patients

Doctors who claim to be religious have more affluent practices.

Considering religions, especially christianity, which i shall single out as this is an american study, and christianity of one shade or another is more prevalent amongst americans.

All have tenets whereby the care for the poor is something all should aspire to - how does it happen that religion is twisted into what we see here by people who take oaths to help people, or does the Hypocratic oath not apply if you can't afford to chip in for your doctors new mansion ?.

Physicians who were more religious in general, as measured by intrinsic religiosity or frequency of attendance at religious services, were much more likely to conceive of the practice of medicine as a calling but not more likely to report practice among the underserved

http://www.annfammed.org/cgi/content/abstract/5/4/353


I shouldn't be suprised by this, if you can deny women access to abortion and reproductive services based on 'religious' belief as has been happening in the United States over the past 7 years, you can deny most anything to anybody.



The quote about rich men, camels and eyes of needles springs into my mind.

[CharlotteSometimes]

Originally posted by spacebandit
A study for The Annals Of Family Medicine in the United States has concluded that religious doctors care less for poor patients

and that doctors who say they are atheists actually have practices which contain a much greater percentage of poor and underserved patients

Doctors who claim to be religious have more affluent practices.

No it hasn't. The conclusion was that "Physicians who are more religious do not appear to disproportionately care for the underserved." There's quite a marked difference.

There were no findings whatsoever based solely on 'doctors who say they are atheists'. They actually banded "atheist, agnostic, and none" together. Even when all three are combined, they represent less than 4% of the respondents who answered the specific question on "religious affiliation".

Almost 3/4 of the respondents, regardless of "religious affiliation", could be deemed as having 'more affluent practices'. There's absolutely nothing in the study which makes a direct connection between religion and affluence.

[spacebandit]

CONCLUSIONS Physicians who are more religious do not appear to disproportionately care for the underserved

yet their religions say they should help the poor, the needy, the less fortunate

Mainline and liberal Protestant churches came to promote what some religious historians have called "golden rule Christianity, whereby they emphasized concrete personal action to right social injustices (such as the misdistribution of physician resources) rather than emphasizing doctrinal orthodoxy. Those who today consider themselves spiritual, but not religious are more likely to have been formed by these mainline and liberal denominations than by their more conservative counterparts. They may therefore be more likely to practice in underserved areas as an expression of commitment to social justice.

Physicians who were more religious in general (as measured by intrinsic religiosity or frequency of attendance at religious services) were not more likely to report care for the underserved

again - strange as their "religion" dictates the opposite

Admissions policies that favor certain religious or spiritual characteristics are not likely to be adopted for many reasons, but if they were, our findings would suggest that admissions officials should ignore both the general religiousness of candidates and their sense of calling to medicine, and should give preference to applicants who consider themselves very spiritual, who either have no religion or strongly agree that the religion they have influences their practice of medicine, or who agree that their families of origin emphasized service to the poor.

the emboldening is mine.


My definition of someone who states they have no religion is "atheist" - wow what a stunning revelation that must be


Reading the whole report helps.
Not just the cover sheet


You can also discover the"religiosity" breakdown of doctors by reported faith and the placement of their practice within the lower economic regions of US population demographics - that is an AMA study from a few years ago. Though it is a rather more technical report and you have to be prepared to follow its "sources" links.

I'm sure you are chomping at the bit to go and discover its findings

and now the story is being commented on by our american cousins - after reading the complete report of course, and they appear to share my opinion of the findings.

Atheist doctors are likely to practice medicine among the underprivileged than religious physicians, even though most religions call on the faithful to serve the poor, according to the results of large cross-sectional survey of US medical practitioners published in Annals of Family Medicine.

Researchers from the University of Chicago and Yale New Haven Hospital report that 31 percent of physicians who were more religious—as measured by "intrinsic religiosity" as well as frequency of attendance at religious services—practiced among the underserved, compared to 35 percent of physicians who described their religion as atheist, agnostic or none.

"This came as both a surprise and a disappointment," study author Farr Curlin, MD, said. "The Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist scriptures all urge physicians to care for the poor, and the great majority of religious physicians describe their practice of medicine as a calling. Yet we found that religious physicians were not more likely to report practice among the underserved than their secular colleagues."

http://pressesc.com/news/80931072007...religious-ones

[CharlotteSometimes]

Originally posted by spacebandit
yet their religions say they should help the poor, the needy, the less fortunate

again - strange as their "religion" dictates the opposite

the emboldening is mine.


My definition of someone who states they have no religion is "atheist" - wow what a stunning revelation that must be


Reading the whole report helps.
Not just the cover sheet

There's nothing in the study to suggest that they don't. Even the wealthy get sick.

'Not more likely' hardly means shun and ignore, and nor does it mean (as far as the data used for this study is concerned) that they are intentionally less likely to, either.

Your definition of an atheist is rather odd. The text you've quoted refers to those who 'have no religion'. Lots of people have no religion, yet still believe in god. The study bands people of differing beliefs (or lack of) together, and no amount of bitter sarcasm is going to change the fact.

I did indeed read the whole study, rather than just the abstract (or 'cover sheet' as you call it). Otherwise, I wouldn't have been aware that the findings had been distorted to fit a bogus assumption.

[spacebandit]

Originally posted by CharlotteSometimes

There's nothing in the study to suggest that they don't. Even the wealthy get sick.

'Not more likely' hardly means shun and ignore, and nor does it mean (as far as the data used for this study is concerned) that they are intentionally less likely to, either.

Your definition of an atheist is rather odd. The text you've quoted refers to those who 'have no religion'. Lots of people have no religion, yet still believe in god. The study bands people of differing beliefs (or lack of) together, and no amount of bitter sarcasm is going to change the fact.

I did indeed read the whole study, rather than just the abstract (or 'cover sheet' as you call it). Otherwise, I wouldn't have been aware that the findings had been distorted to fit a bogus assumption.

Strange that every news report commenting on it so far takes from it the same that I did, and uses the same terminology

Although there are some far right american christian fundamentalists who are taking strong objection - which isn't particularly suprising....... perhaps you should try looking towards them for a assumptions that you can agree with, and which all independent commentators regard as bogus as well as biased

My definition of atheism is pretty exact

Atheism is the "belief" in the non-existance of god[s]

You appear to not know the difference between atheism and agnosticism

[CharlotteSometimes]

There's nothing 'strange' here at all, other than a rather odd fascination with hollow, illogical conspiracy theories. Even the title of the thread is highly misleading, as firstly it fails to specify American doctors and secondly, there's not a shred of evidence in the study to support the remainder.

I'm not interested in cross talk, I'm interested in an accurate portrayal of the study's findings. From the abstract it's interesting, but when you read the full report it's far too vague. The findings are contradictory, the sample is tiny given that it's supposedly representative of a nation of 300 million+ and there's nothing of any real consequence to indicate how fairly the questionnaires were distributed, much less how diverse the respondents may have been with regards to location.

You misrepresented the facts by using the term 'atheists'. But that was established nine days ago. Perhaps you should have another read through the thread, and in particular the second paragraph of the second post. Attributing your own errors to others is really poor form.

[J.C.]

To answer the main question, I must first accept the fact that religious doctors (in the USA) care less for poor patients, and based on this research alone, I can’t see how anyone can buy into this idea at all. Technically, it is impossible to answer the question posed because there is simply nothing like enough evidence to back up the claim in the first place.

First, there is the author’s main conclusion……….

‘‘Physicians who are more religious do not appear to disproportionately care for the underserved.’’

Then, there is the part you focus on…………..

‘‘Physicians who were more religious in general, as measured by intrinsic religiosity or frequency of attendance at religious services, were much more likely to conceive of the practice of medicine as a calling but not more likely to report practice among the underserved’’

Correct me if I am wrong here, but as I see it, neither of these conclusions show that physicians with a high intrinsic religiosity were less likely to report a practice among the undeserved.

Then we have to consider the research itself……………

a. The survey was tiny, and that’s significant because there is apparently no other available research in this field. It was a survey of just 2000, where only about 1,100 responded.

b. Of the 1.100 respondents an undisclosed number were offered, and paid money to complete the survey after failing twice to respond.

c. In the main study relating to the same questionnaire the author points out the existence of a still high level of confusion over the exact meaning of the word spirituality, as indeed, do I.

d. The survey attempted to cover a wide demographic but didn’t include US doctors working overseas. One could argue that a high percentage of this group are driven towards working for the undeserved. As a group they may also have strong intrinsic religiosity, and if so, this would have affected the survey too.


e. The Authors own conclusion about the survey ends……..
‘‘…… other less overt forms of response bias cannot be ruled out’’.

You chose to single out the Christian group because they make up the majority of the survey, thus disregarding much of what little data is available.

F.A. Curlin also noted………

‘‘ We found that Jewish, Hindu, and Muslim physicians in the United States are only about half as likely as those with Christian affiliations to say that they try to carry their religious beliefs into other dealings in life’’.

You say that just about every report on the subject takes the same view as yours. I doubt this is possible but let’s look at the first line of the one report that you have linked to…….


Submitted by Vidura Panditaratne on Tue, 2007-07-31 12:32.

‘‘Atheist doctors are likely to practice medicine among the underprivileged than religious physicians…….’’

I’m not simply trying to be petty here, but I couldn’t help noticing how the all important 4th word was missing. I accept that it may be a genuine typo, but lmao ,may I suggest that either the reporter couldn’t quite bring themselves to use the word ‘more’ knowing it to be incorrect or dare I suggest that it was in fact an after thought, an edit, perhaps after some gentle persuasion, it was removed. Whatever the reason, the word ‘likely’ , now on it’s own, suggests an even higher % and is therefore even more inaccurate and misleading.

This study was carried out with good intentions by a professional but I don’t believe there is any viable data that could possibly lead anyone to conclude that ‘Religious Doctors care less for poor patients’ and that apparently includes the researcher him/herself.

Having read the research, the question I would like to ask is what the % was for those who only answered the questionnaire after they were paid money, and perhaps more interesting than that, what levels of intrinsic religiosity did they claim to have. lol.

Also, we can’t overlook the 37% that chose not take part in the survey, despite being offered the money. Perhaps there is a group whose religiosity is so strong it needs to remain that private??
I don’t pretend to have a clue about such motivations but feel certain that there is no realistic way that I could conclude from this research alone that ‘religious doctors care less for poor patients’.

If I tossed a coin 1000 times and got 12 more heads than tails, would you then accept my general claim that I can throw more heads than tails . It would of course be a falsehood but the limited statistics available could be misused to show otherwise, especially if I needed them to, though, judging from this thread I suspect such claims would rightly be shot down very quickly. lol .

I doubt you would normally form an opinion based on such a low threshold of proof but if you were to, then you would be frequently mislead, just as I would have been, had I simply tried to answer the thread question without checking the evidence first. I notice your opinion has already shifted in that now you are suggesting that religious doctors should care more for the poor than their non religious associates. I would suggest that that is a step in the right direction, at least as far as the more equal statistics are concerned anyway. Even that may be hard to live up to though, considering that the other side to your argument is clearly that non religious doctors already offer more services to the poor, so it all seems to work out fine to me, but I’m sure they could all still try harder. lol