Exploring the Need, Capacity, and Preferences for Faith-Based Healthcare Ethics Services

People regularly make difficult ethical decisions about their healthcare. Not surprisingly, people who are highly religious primarily rely on religious teachings when deciding what is right and wrong. All major religions have teachings on controversial moral issues such as abortion, prenatal genetic testing, physician-assisted suicide, and organ donation. However, some religious teachings related to healthcare are complex, not widely known, or challenging to apply in concrete situations.

No one has yet studied how often highly religious people make difficult healthcare ethics decisions, whether they have access to healthcare ethics consultation (HEC) services, whether HEC providers feel qualified to serve the needs of people from diverse faith groups, and how highly religious people, including their faith leaders, would prefer to meet HEC needs. With funding from the BF Foundation, we will study these important issues.

First, we will survey 3,000 highly religious people to identify the healthcare ethics decisions they grapple with, the assistance they seek, and the gap between what they seek and what is available. We will conduct follow up interviews with 30 participants to gain greater insight into these issues. Second, we will conduct 180 surveys and 30 interviews with HEC providers. Third, we will interview 30 faith leaders. With both HEC providers and faith leaders we wish to understand how well prepared they feel to address complex healthcare issues from a religious perspective, and what resources they would welcome.

Building of the results from these surveys and interviews, we will explore several real-world options for better meeting the needs of highly religious patients, such as: (a) establishing a national network of faith-based HEC providers who can be accessed via phone or videoconferencing, (b) creating bioethics training programs for faith leaders, or (c) developing a faith-based healthcare ethics website that addresses issues highly religious people most struggle with from diverse faith perspectives.