Medical spirituality: Defining domains and boundaries

The rapidly accumulating evidence that personal spirituality has important influences on health care outcomes is somewhat difficult to integrate into daily medical practice, in part-because accepting it requires adjustments to the standard biomedical worldview, and in part because it challenges established boundaries between chaplaincy and evidence-based medicine. We propose that the recognition of medical spirituality as a distinct, interdisciplinary field of interest, with its own well-developed body of clinical evidence, clinical skill, clinical ethics, and with well-defined clinical boundaries, can help overcome much of the current confusion about how to integrate the new knowledge, and help pre-empt developing "turf" issues. The new field would contribute significantly to reframing the worldview of healing practice, consistent with the evidence-based approach.