Religious doctors do not care more for the poor

A new study by doctors in the U.S. has found that being religious does not enhance the way a doctor cares for poor patients.

The study suggests that even doctors who consider religion to be a major motivating factor in their lives are no more likely to care for poor, underserved patients than those who have no religious affiliation.

The research was prompted by Dr. Farr Curlin, of the University of Chicago, who is himself a religious person.

Dr. Curlin says he undertook the study because many religions include a call to serve the poor and he was curious to see whether doctors with established religious beliefs were more likely to take care of patients who are poor.

Curlin and his colleagues at Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut mailed surveys to 1,820 practicing doctors of whom 63 percent responded.

Questions regarding the role of religion as a motive in the doctors lives provided a measure of "intrinsic religiosity" and the doctors also answered questions about how frequently they attended religious services, the extent they considered themselves to be spiritual, and whether they believed the practice of medicine was a calling.

The team found that doctors who were deemed more religious were no more likely to report caring for underserved patient populations such as the poor, uninsured or on Medicaid, the federal program for the poor.

Dr. Curlin says the study showed that religious physicians are not disproportionately caring for the underserved.

The researchers say the doctors who were more likely to report practice among the underserved included those who were highly spiritual, those who strongly agreed their religious beliefs influenced their practice of medicine and those who strongly agreed the family in which they were raised emphasized service to the poor.

Underserved in regard to health services refers to populations which are disadvantaged because of ability to pay, ability to access care, ability to access comprehensive health care.

The study appears in the July-August issue of the journal Annals of Family Medicine.