Equipping the Saints and Taking a Spiritual History
This article originally appeared in the December 2024 issue of FOCUS.
Melissa McConville
You are not alone. You are a warrior for Christ every day in your clinic, your surgical suite, your ward, or your hospital – wherever you find yourself. He has called you, and He is equipping you, for His purposes. The enemy has been entering through broken walls in healthcare, but you are not alone. “Come to me all who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28 NLT)
He goes before you each day. He wants to provide for you. You cannot do this in your own strength anymore. “But they are deeply guilty, for their own strength is their god.” (Habakkuk 1:11 NLT) The people you care for need Him too. “So never be ashamed to tell others about our Lord.” (2 Timothy 1:8 NLT)
You have systems in healthcare that allow you to have faith conversations – spiritual tools and medical legal systems in place that provide the means to safely integrate complementary spiritual approaches to healing. You need not be afraid. He is a resource for you and for your patients. He wants you to be able to hear Him, to listen to Him while you do your work. “My sheep hear my voice.” (John 10:27 NKJV) Turn your ear towards Him while working. Cultivate your heart to hear Him in the midst of your patients’ storms.
How do you introduce Him to your patients? Bring Him into your patient encounters by asking questions. Ask about each patient’s spiritual beliefs or relationship to Him. Be curious. This is called taking a spiritual history.
You will recognize through your patient’s body language, tone, and verbal response if they are giving you an ‘open’ or ‘closed door’ around talking about their spiritual beliefs. If the door is ‘closed’, move on to the remainder of your medical history. If a patient appears defensive, you can gently and objectively inform them that a spiritual history is still part of medical school training today. Be loving and objective and give a concrete example, such as needing to know which patients are Jehovah’s Witnesses, as they refuse blood transfusions, even in dire medical situations.
If you sense an ‘open door’ to your spiritual question, or the patient is questioning its medical validity, then briefly educate them, if interested, on the intimate relationship between the physical and nonphysical aspects (mental, emotional, and spiritual) of who they are. Teach them that beliefs, dreams, feelings, thoughts, hopes and will to live can all affect health and healing – even though this is challenging to study objectively. Talk with them about the interplay between the invisible and visible parts of their “spirit and soul and body.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23 NLT)
Take your spiritual history. Do as you have been trained as medical practitioners. Then listen… He will speak to 
you. He will give you a clear ‘green light’ when to speak His truths or His Word, Scripture, to your patients when the time is right. Document your intervention, then let it go. He will do the rest while you do your job diagnosing and supplying the right treatment and follow-up. You are not alone, He is right there in the space with you.
Keep it simple. Do your job, stick to your training, take a spiritual history, give information, get consent, complement medical care with His Word if led to, and then document. Do all this on top of what you are already doing as doctors. Don’t take anything away, but complement patient care when you have the ‘green light’ from Him and the patient to do so.
You are not alone. He will be there with you. Invite Him into each patient encounter. He wants to fill the space with you – through you. He will help you. You are His faithful servant. You are not alone and you are not without support and strategy too. You also have another powerful tool – His Word, the Bible. The land of healthcare, that He made a way for, is under attack. Darkness has infiltrated into this territory and is now trying to take your patients. Therefore, stand “strong in the Lord”, put on your armor and “fight back against the enemy” by using “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” (Ephesians 6:10,17 PEV, NLT)
The ABC’s of Taking a Spiritual History
A: ASK
Depending on the situation and the chief complaint, a spiritual history can be as simple as whether or not someone has faith or belief, or it can be more extensive in asking about what they believe, when their belief started, how involved they are in living out their beliefs, whether they belong to an organized religion, etc. Be objective. Ask and document the information you collect either in past medical history (after smoking and alcohol history), or put the spiritual history within the patient’s social history.
B: BECAUSE
Explain why you are asking about the spiritual history of your patient. If there is limited time for explanation, as in an emergency situation, stand in your medical training that a spiritual history is a vital part of complete patient care and that it is within the scope of your medical expertise to ask, given that it provides valuable diagnostic and therapeutic medical information.
C: CONTINUE
Don’t linger, preach, or teach at this time – move on from the spiritual history to your next question in your history. As with smoking, alcohol, or even a social history, it is important that you objectively and systematically collect information about any part of a history – spiritual history included.
Note the information you gather internally and move on. You will begin to filter any relevant spiritual information such as spiritual half-truths, or spiritual oppression, or even outright spiritual lies that your patient may be living with as you begin to formulate a biomedical spiritual assessment on your patient to use later in the patient encounter.
If you would like more information on how to integrate spiritual histories and faith more powerfully into your medical practice, or if you would like more information on physician health and wellness, please contact me for a free telephone appointment. I will provide time to help you map out your professional faith goals, or personal health and wellness goals, and how to get you there efficiently and effectively. For more information on the coaching and consulting I provide regarding integrating your faith into medicine, please go to www.kingdomdoctorsacademy.com or contact me at info@kingdomdocotorsacademy.com. For more information on coaching for your personal physician health and wellness please go to www.physicianhealthcaresolutions.com or contact me via my email at melissa@physicianhealthcaresolutions.com. You can also reach me by phone at 250-713-7618 or you can book a free appointment through either website. On both websites you will also find physician testimonies along with free resources, such as my e-guide “5 Keys To Releasing Jesus Into Your Life & Medical Practice” to help you and your patients with a biomedical spiritual approach to health and healing.