September 13
th
DQ
Is data about spirituality and religion necessary in the medical field?
Most data sets about spirituality and religion are empirical data sets. Jeff Levin wrote a vital
study using practical data sets and questions about how patients weighed their spirituality
against treatment. In his study, he acknowledged a significant bias in the research and around
the data type of concern. The reading accepts that its purposes and use is not necessary to
pursue the skeptic but is a way to quantify its positive effect on medical care.
Is there an acceptable amount of uncertainty in the medical field?
The reading defines uncertainty as the uncertainty in judgment, not uncertainty in probability or
ignorance. Also, any good thing in a large amount becomes a fault, which also follows in the
case of uncertainty. Certainty and uncertainty exist together; with this in mind, care decisions
also consist of both. Job training, such as medical school, allows one to make educated
judgments with either knowledge or experience, but little comes without uncertainty. What
connects this most is the idea that the intolerance of uncertainty creates an absence of
essential trust. These ideas all play into the fact that there is no cure for everything, and this
ignorance undermines human limitations and how medicine works on behalf of humans.
