Eliciting the patient’s motives and goals and helping the patient and her loved ones explore alternatives are essential to maintaining trusting relationships and open communication.

The World Health Organization and American Academy of Pediatrics recommend disclosing serostatus to sexually active adolescents. What else can be done to improve clinical outcomes and promote public health?

Physicians who are uncomfortable with patients’ requests to participate in prayer should pause, listen respectfully, and reflect back their understanding of the request, regardless of whether they pray.

The George Washington University has taken the lead in preparing trainees to meet patients’ spiritual needs by integrating spirituality into its curriculum, developing a training program for teaching interprofessional spiritual care, and designing spirituality-related competency behaviors.

Physicians should accommodate patients’ religious or spiritual understanding of suffering, even when they disagree, as long as they uphold their commitment to health. Both physicians and chaplains, who promote patients’ spiritual well-being, should respectfully challenge patients when necessary.

Religion and spirituality in medicine can help clinicians empathize with their patients, collaborate with hospital chaplains, and advance faith-based initiatives, hospital policy, and legislation.

Clinicians in Catholic health care institutions cannot prescribe contraceptives for pregnancy prevention under a false diagnosis without committing fraud and contravening doctrine. Referrals are one option the authors consider for navigating patient requests for contraception.

Successful implementation of initiatives to improve screening and access to health-promotion activities at minority-serving religious institutions requires partnering with faith-based organizations, adapting interventions, and leveraging organizational infrastructure and social networks.

The 3 drawings in this series illustrate how patients’ fears and suffering—generated by dental pain, chemotherapy, or lack of health insurance—can be counterbalanced by the foundational ethical principles of beneficence, nonmaleficence, respect for autonomy, and justice.

Educators discussing ethically challenging topics with students should try to cultivate open mindedness while illuminating potential negative consequences that their health practice beliefs—such as refusing to provide abortion care—can have for patients, particularly those with limited options.