World Religions for Healthcare Professionals

This third edition of a popular text introduces healthcare students and professionals to a wide range of health beliefs and practices in world religions. Chapters on various religions are written to offer an insider’s view on the religion’s historical development, key beliefs and practices, including ideas of health, sickness, death, and dying. The chapters include case studies, advice on what to do and what to avoid when caring for patients.

Introductory chapters invite the reader to consider the broad context of patient care in pluralistic society and explore one’s personal orientation to others from different religions. How we care for patients from different backgrounds and cultures insists on professional boundaries that the reader may have not yet examined. A new chapter explores the relationship between religion and public health in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, asking the reader to consider what morally appropriate balance is required if and when personal faith conflict with public health needs.

Undoubtedly, the sensitivity with which clinicians communicate with patients and make decisions regarding appropriate medical intervention can be greatly increased by an understanding of religious and cultural diversity.

This is a core textbook for students studying healthcare, religion and culture, and an invaluable reference for healthcare professionals.

Siroj Sorajjakool, PhD, received his degree from Claremont School of Theology in the field of personality and theology and currently serves as professor of religion, psychology, and counseling at Loma Linda University. His research focus is on psychology among Asian religions.

Mark F. Carr, PhD, served as professor of ethics in the School of Religion at Loma Linda University and the theological co-director of the Center for Christian Bioethics at the same institution. He received his doctoral degree in religious ethics at the University of Virginia and wrote Passionate Deliberation: Emotion, Temperance, and the Care Ethic in Clinical Moral Deliberation (2001). After a brief time as chair of the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at Kettering College in Ohio, he now works in Anchorage, Alaska, where he serves as the region director of ethics for Providence Health and Services.

Ernest J. Bursey, PhD, is professor of religion in the department of Health and Biomedical Sciences at Adventist University of Health Sciences in Orlando, Florida. He received his doctoral degree from Yale University in the field of religious studies with a dissertation on exorcism in the Gospel of Matthew. He has had a long academic career at Walla Walla University where he served as dean of the School of Theology, and more recently at Adventist University of Health Sciences where he teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in Spirituality and Healthcare, World Religions, Bioethics, and Biblical Studies.