Read in isolation, the headline of the Guardian's report into newly published research on doctors' attitudes and behaviour ("Atheist doctors 'more likely to hasten death'") might lead you to think that there are a bunch of humanist physicians poised, with potassium chloride-filled syringes, over the bedside of sick patients. However, the article itself informed us that the problem did not appear to lie with the average atheist doctor but rather with the average very religious doctor.

Professor Clive Seale, to whom society owes a debt of gratitude for his prolific research in this difficult to study area, published a study in the Journal of Medical Ethics (JME), which involved asking a large number of doctors about their views and behaviour in terminal cases.

Much of the data had already been published last year by Seale in a paper entitled "Hastening death in end of life care: a survey of doctors". One of the conclusions of that paper was:

"Doctors who said they were religious or who opposed the legalisation of assisted dying were less likely to report decisions where they expected or intended to hasten the end of life. This may be because sanctity of life is a more pressing concern for these doctors than quality of life and may be a cause for concern if this results in patients with similar needs and preferences receiving different treatment."

What was new in the JME paper was an analysis of the religiosity of doctors against a number of outcomes. The significant findings included:

First, whether doctors undertook medical measures that they either intended or expected to hasten the death of a terminally ill patient. It should be stressed that this dealt with entirely legal and ethical practices such as the withdrawal or withholding of, especially onerous, life-sustaining treatment (on the basis of futility or a patient's autonomous decision to refuse) or the use of high-dose opiate pain control. This was nearly half as likely in non-religious doctors than very religious ones.

Second, whether they had discussed the medical management of the process of death with their terminally ill patients or their relatives. The study suggested that very religious doctors were about four times less likely than all other doctors (the non-religious or the mildly religious) to have had those discussions.

Assuming that the data is reliable and adequately adjusted for response rate and other biases, which it appears to be, it is a very interesting finding. Not least because patients, politicians and the profession these days rightly put a premium on this sort of discussion. Indeed, the General Medical Council (GMC) guidance on managing the end of life and including decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment, continuous sedation of the terminally ill or more morphine-based pain control, are very clear that patients with mental capacity, and/or their relative where appropriate, should be involved in the decision making.

This finding has a number of sensible implications and had led to a few silly ones. Seale, on Radio 4's today programme, asserted that patients really ought to be interested in the religion or at least the religiosity of their doctors and went so far as to suggest they should ask the doctors if they were concerned that decisions might be taken without their involvement.

However, there is probably consensus among medical ethicists on the following matters. First, that outside of conscientious objection (which must be explicit, and declared), a doctor is not supposed to allow their religious views to impair or indeed influence unduly the care that they deliver to patients. Second, that doctors should not have to reveal their religion to their patients and indeed should be encouraged not to enter into discussions of their own religious views even if asked.

On the basis of what the study actually revealed, a more appropriate headline for the story would have been "Religious doctors less likely to ask your opinion on treatment option when you're terminally ill". What now needs to happen is an additional effort by the medical profession and their regulators to ensure that doctors adequately consult with patients about their wishes and views and do not allow, even subconsciously, their own religious – or political, for that matter – views to distort their medical practice.