Religion, Spirituality, and the Hidden Curriculum: Medical Student and Faculty Reflections

Context: Religion and spirituality play an important role in physicians' medical practice, but little research has examined their influence within the socialization of medical trainees and the hidden curriculum.

Objectives: The objective is to explore the role of religion and spirituality as they intersect with aspects of medicine's hidden curriculum.

Methods: Semiscripted, one-on-one interviews and focus groups (n = 33 respondents) were conducted to assess Harvard Medical School student and faculty experiences of religion/spirituality and the professionalization process during medical training. Using grounded theory, theme extraction was performed with interdisciplinary input (medicine, sociology, and theology), yielding a high inter-rater reliability score (kappa = 0.75).

Results: Three domains emerged where religion and spirituality appear as a factor in medical training. First, religion/spirituality may present unique challenges and benefits in relation to the hidden curriculum. Religious/spiritual respondents more often reported to struggle with issues of personal identity, increased self-doubt, and perceived medical knowledge inadequacy. However, religious/spiritual participants less often described relationship conflicts within the medical team, work-life imbalance, and emotional stress arising from patient suffering. Second, religion/spirituality may influence coping strategies during encounters with patient suffering. Religious/spiritual trainees described using prayer, faith, and compassion as means for coping whereas nonreligious/nonspiritual trainees discussed compartmentalization and emotional repression. Third, levels of religion/spirituality appear to fluctuate in relation to medical training, with many trainees experiencing an increase in religiousness/spirituality during training.

Conclusion: Religion/spirituality has a largely unstudied but possibly influential role in medical student socialization. Future study is needed to characterize its function within the hidden curriculum.