A fundamental aspect of our human experience includes striving for meaning, hopefulness and purpose – this process can be understood as a spiritual experience.
Until recently the health professions have largely followed a medical model, which seeks to treat patients by focusing on medicines and surgery, and gives less importance to beliefs and to faith – in healing, in the physician and in the doctor-patient relationship. This reductionism or mechanistic view of patients as being only a material body is no longer satisfactory.