Article January 20, 1997 Issue

Reports from Canada

Bob Harvey

The Ottawa Citizen

• The Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation now has new guidelines that call on Canada's hospitals and other health-care institutions to include spiritual support as a component of care.

• In Calgary, the operator of the country's largest health-care clinic, Dr. Howard Gimbel, a Seventh-Day Adventist, accepts cataract patients' requests for prayer.

Dr. John Williams, director of ethics and legal affairs for the Canadian Medical Association, says many physicians do pray with patients of their own faith, and there is no ethical problem as long as the physician doesn't exploit the relationship. "It can often be a very powerful part of the physician-patient relationship," he says.

"We've realized people are not just bodies, and that their spirituality matters," said Williams.

By Bob Harvey, Religion Editor from The Ottawa Citizen, July 27, 1996
Reprinted with permission.

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