Hospital chaplaincy units show bias towards Christianity

doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7466.626

BMJ 2004;329:626 (11 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7466.626

Letter

Hospital chaplaincy units show bias towards Christianity

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—The Human Rights Act 1998 and the Patient's Charterplace a legal responsibility on public bodies to ensure therights of individuals to religious observance.^1
2 Concern has,however, been expressed that access to spiritual care in hospitalsfor those of non-Christian faiths is limited.³ We thereforeconducted a national survey of hospital chaplaincy units.

We randomly selected 100 NHS hospitals in England and Wales.Chaplaincy units were asked to complete a questionnaire, administeredover the telephone, that inquired about worship space, chaplaincystaffing, and quality of care delivered to faith communities.⁴

We established contact with 72 units, and all agreed to participate.Multifaith prayer rooms were reported to be present in 10 hospitals.Fifty four hospitals had a dedicated place of worship for Christianscompared with four hospitals with a dedicated space for Buddhists,six for Hindus, four for Jews, 13 for Muslims, and five forSikhs (P . . . [Full text of this article]

Aziz Sheikh, professor of primary care research and development

Division of Community Health Sciences: General Practice Section, University of Edinburgh EH8 9DX aziz.sheikh@ed.ac.uk

Abdul Rashid Gatrad, consultant paediatrician

Department of Paediatrics, Manor Hospital, Walsall WS2 9PS

Usman Sheikh, research assistant

Research and Documentation Committee, Muslim Council of Britain, London E15 1NT

Sukhmeet Singh Panesar, medical student

Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ

Shuja Shafi, consultant in public health

North West London Hospitals Trust, Harrow HA1 3UJ

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