The Happy Marriage of Prayer & Medicine

This is refreshing!


Just Pray It: The Happy Marriage of Prayer and Medicine

As a doctor, Larry Dossey arrived early to pray for patients. As an author, he put spirituality in medical care.

Dr. Larry Dossey first broke into American consciousness in 1993. He offered a simple but powerful message in the form of a best-selling book, “Healing Words.”

“I wanted people to realize the power of prayer in the practice of medicine,” says Dossey in recent sit-down interview with CarePages.com. “I set out to make the connection of science to prayer’s healing powers. There were some good studies I included in the first book. These days, I can point you to more than 250 studies showing how prayer and faith life can heal patients and ease pain, plus allow us to live longer no matter what our medical conditions.”

Perhaps it is no small thing that Dossey bypassed one career choice, becoming a minister, to serve as an M.D. While researching his first book, Dossey started arriving early at his medical office each morning to pray for his patients coming for a visit that day.

Let that sink in for a minute. A doctor. Prayers. Arriving early to spend “time” with patients hours from arriving.

More than a decade later, Dossey is certainly not basking in the success of his staunch and ongoing campaign about prayer and healing, but he does allow today’s physicians can more easily pray with patients and caregivers in doctor’s offices, hospital rooms, surgery pre-op, you name it.

“Back then [1993], three medical schools out of 125 accredited American programs taught any course including how spirituality and prayer can affect patients,” said Dossey. “Now I’m happy to say more than 90 schools teach spirituality and medicine classes. Plus, every new medical student in this country is required to know how to take a spiritual history.”

And here’s the intrigue of Dossey’s decision to write the first book. In December 2004, the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York conducted a study of 1,087 physicians to get their views on prayer and miracles. The survey shows the majority of today's doctors respect prayer's role in the healing and recovery process—and they didn’t flinch at mention of miracles.

Some of the findings from the Jewish Theological survey:
About three-quarters of the doctors said they believed prayer could be effective in helping to heal patients.

Fifty-nine percent of the doctors said they prayed for individual patients.
Half of the physicians made a regular habit of praying collectively for their patients.
Fifty-five percent of the MDs said they had observed miraculous recoveries in their own practices.

All of these numbers add up to one important tally for patients and caregivers alike: Don’t be afraid to ask doctors, especially those you admire and connect with, to pray with you and loved ones. There can be great power in such moments, Dossey said, calling upon not only all medical treatments available but also a higher power.

An important step is praying with intent and love. Sounds impossible with your doctors? Maybe not, in fact, probably not, if you absorb the Jewish Theological survey findings. Don’t forget, ask your doctor for not only a prayer but the focus (translation: an extra minute or three) to offer a prayer of “care.”

"I've had the opportunity to talk with a lot of healers who do the praying or intending or whatever you want to call it," Dossey explained. "Those healers say if you want prayer to work, there has to be a compassionate connection. You have to care, not just pray."

By no accident, Dossey’s wife, Barbara, has co-pioneered the prayer and medicine campaign with her husband through her professional calling as a holistic nurse. She has tackled the difficult question of how to separate any “possible confusion” between how spirituality and prayer can positively improve patient care as opposed to the use of organized religion. The rabbi and best-selling author Harold Kushner When Bad Things Happen to Good People, has long contended that “Spirituality brings us together and organized religion tears us apart.”
“Nurses [and others] can share and express their spirituality without using traditional religious language,” says Barbara Dossey.

For example, Barbara Dossey suggest that nurses, doctors and, yes, especially caregivers, can encourage patients to explore some spiritual questions devoid of required denominations. You can easily imagine the healing that each question—and answer—can produce in caregiving situations:

What do I feel good about?
With whom do I feel most free to "be myself"?
What is the hardest thing about my illness for me and my family?
What helps me "from within myself and from outside"?
What worries me most?
What am I afraid of?