Religious and Spiritual Case Reports on MEDLINE: a Systematic Analysis of Records from 1980 to 1996

Objective: To undertake a systematic analysis of case reports involving religious or spiritual issues published between 1980 and 1996.

Data Sources: MEDLINE, the National Library of Medicine's bibliographic database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and the preclinical sciences.

Study Selection: A search of 4,306,906 records indexed on MEDLINE from 1980 to 1996.

Data Extraction: A total of 364 abstracts were found, then subjected to coding analysis.

Data Synthesis: Categories were developed for (1) types of healthcare situations involving religious/spiritual issues, (2) religious and spiritual interventions, (3) collaboration between healthcare and religious professionals, (4) psychopathology and sensitivity themes, and (5) religious faith/spiritual path. Although all of these case reports involved religious and spiritual issues, only 45 (12%) explicitly mentioned a religious professional. Of these, only 8 (2%) indicated any collaboration between healthcare and religious professionals.

Conclusions: A paucity of published case report literature exists on religious and spiritual issues (.008% of the MEDLINE records), indicating that the increasing acceptance of these factors by patients and healthcare professionals is not yet reflected in scientific and clinical journals. A need exists for more documented examples of collaboration between healthcare and religious professionals.