Physician Disengagement and Spiritual Dissonance in Medical Students

Background and Objectives: Religion and spirituality constitute aspects of diversity that physicians must respect to provide patient-centered care. By seeing patients as individuals and integrating their religious and spiritual needs into their medical care, providers can deliver personalized health care. Their needs become even more critical for the frontline providers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most patients want their physicians to address their religious and spiritual needs when it comes to their health (eg, during isolation precautions). Despite increases in educational curricula about this integration, most physicians still do not provide this aspect of patient-centered care. Methods: In this observational study, we examined how medical students responded to a patient experiencing a religious and spiritual issue by having standardized patients (SPs) rate the students’ level of engagement with them. We also asked students to reflect on their own spirituality, in terms of their current and ideal levels of spirituality, the difference of which indicates spiritual dissonance. Medical students (n=232) completed the Spiritual Health and Life-Outcome Measure (SHALOM) questionnaire, and their SPs completed the Princess Margaret Hospital Satisfaction With Doctor Questionnaire (PSQ-MD). Results: Results indicated a significant, positive correlation between disengagement (from PSQ-MD) and transcendent spirituality dissonance (from SHALOM). Conclusions: Higher levels of disconnection from a patient case with a religious and spiritual issue (portrayed by an SP) were associated with higher levels of incongruity in medical students’ responses as to their ideal relationship with the transcendent (eg, God, Allah, peace).

Typologies of Marian Maternity

Chapter 5 focuses on female readings of the fleshly connection between Christ and his mother, Mary. For Aemilia Lanyer and Dorothy Leigh, Mary’s material labour had spiritual consequences because, in delivering Christ, she delivered God’s plan for salvation and inaugurated the new covenant which atones for Eve’s sin. Yet a typological reading of the scriptures also allows these writers to suggest that the new covenant initiates a form of maternity that has, within the Christological dispensation, profound spiritual resonance. For if, as Salve Deus and The Mothers Blessing advocate, the Bible is read typologically, Mary’s maternity becomes a mechanism of deliverance for all women, and inaugurates a form of maternity rich in spiritual issue and consequence.

“A SERIOUSNESS THAT FAILS”: RECONSIDERING SYMBOLISM IN OSCAR WILDE'SSALOMÉ

Writing as recently as 2011, Michael Bennett asks ifSaloméis an anomaly in the oeuvre of Oscar Wilde (viii). Read against his witty societal comedies of manners, it certainly appears to be one.Saloméhas been regarded as a fine example of symbolist drama in the history of British theatre, and few critics would dispute its “seriousness” as such. Its growing significance in recent discourses of gender and sexuality also adds seriousness to the play. Although Feminist and gender critics show little qualms about dubbing the play as symbolist, the final tableau of a young girl kissing the mouth of the severed head seems to me at odds with symbolism, whether Salomé is seen as an archetypal femme fatale, a queer man in disguise, or a New Woman as critics argue. Symbolism in Wilde'sSaloméis widely different from other specimens of the genre such as Yeats'sThe Countess Cathleen, for instance, which directly deals with a spiritual issue of the salvation of soul.Saloméalso lacks the fatalistic sense of doom that dominates Maeterlinck'sPrincess Maleine, with which it is often compared. Wilde's wayward heroine is not a victim of the invisible forces in the same way Maeterlinck's characters are. Wilde's Salomé is “monstrous,” as Herod says: she seems to commit “a crime against some unknown God” (Complete Works604). How can we reconcile her cruel passion of carnal desire with the supposed spirituality of the symbolist tradition? Also problematic in a symbolist reading of the play is the presence of the comic and the parodic, as pointed out by many critics. Is Wilde'sSaloméan authentic symbolist drama?