IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v49y1999i12p1717-1722.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Religious characteristics of US women physicians

Author

Listed:
  • Frank, Erica
  • Dell, Mary Lynn
  • Chopp, Rebecca

Abstract

Physicians' religious attributes are unknown, and may affect patient care. The Women Physicians' Health Study (WPHS) is a random sample (n=4501 respondents, 59% response rate) of US women physicians aged 30-70; the first large, national study of US women physicians. In this study US women physicians were less likely to be Christian than were other Americans (61.2% of women physicians versus 85.1% of the general population), but were more likely to be Jewish (13.2% vs 2.0%), Buddhist (1.4% vs 0.3%), Hindu (3.9% vs 0.4%), or atheist/agnostic (5.9% vs 0.6%). Protestantism (29.3% of the population) and Catholicism (24.9%) were the most commonly reported religious identities. The strongest religious identity was claimed by Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists. Thus, women physicians' religious beliefs differ from those of the general population in the US. This may be particularly important for physicians practicing with patient populations with different religious affiliations, and in addressing clinical questions with ethical or religious dimensions.

Suggested Citation

  • Frank, Erica & Dell, Mary Lynn & Chopp, Rebecca, 1999. "Religious characteristics of US women physicians," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 49(12), pages 1717-1722, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:49:y:1999:i:12:p:1717-1722
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(99)00241-5
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Klitzman, Robert L. & Daya, Shaira, 2005. "Challenges and changes in spirituality among doctors who become patients," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(11), pages 2396-2406, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:49:y:1999:i:12:p:1717-1722. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.