Religious Doctors No More Likely To Care For Underserved Patients?

Actually this is another of those headlines that mislead. In this case the headline figures about religious and non-religious hide a variety of issues about adherence, identity and culture. So it may be significant that when the study corrects for 'more conventional' religion we find a slightly different picture emerges. "Physicians who strongly agreed that their religious beliefs influence their practice of medicine were more likely to report practice among the under-served. However, physicians who were more religious in general (as measured by their intrinsic religiosity or their frequency of attending religious services) were not more likely to practice among the under-served. Even the more religious physicians who reported that their families emphasized service to the poor and that, for them, the practice of medicine was a calling, were no more likely to practice among the under-served.
Curlin and colleagues also noted that those who identified themselves as very spiritual, whether or not they were religious, were roughly twice as likely to care for the under-served as those who described their spirituality as low."
We should perhaps also recall the Barna (I think it was) survey of USAmerican "evangelicals" which showed a remarkable lack of churchy-faith translation to key convictions or action.
It seems to me the scientists involved in the study would do well to inform themselves better of the realities of the interaction of social status, religion and culture ... ?
ScienceDaily: Religious Doctors No More Likely To Care For Underserved Patients: