Ethnic, Religious And Cultural Practices During Pregnancy

The increasing population of immigrants in the United States has contributed to health disparities in the health care system. Cultural competence can remove health disparities by eliminating personal biases, and treating every person with respect. Simply recognizing and accepting different cultures is not enough, one must be able to consistently recognize and understand the differences in order to be culturally competent. Knowledge and culturally competent practices are a must for nurses to deliver quality care in our rapidly changing multicultural world (Edelman, 2014 p. 25).

With the United States becoming increasingly diverse, healthcare professionals face a multicultural clients and it

Chapter 4, “Better Dead than Pregnant:” The Colonization of Native Womens’ Reproductive Health, discusses women's bodies being utilized as an experimental ground for reproduction and medical testing. Smith argues that racism plays a key role in the common anxieties about a rise in the global population. Even though population control organizations may claim to want to reduce the size of every ethnic and racial group, in the end, they often work to reduce populations of color. This reality leads to Smith’s argument of reproductive rights, which she views as a thinly veiled effort to destroy and control Native American communities. An illustration of this direct violation of women's reproductive rights was when the "Indian Health

I am a Brazilian black male with military experience and diplomatic knowledge who grew up in a low-income household in a developing country. In addition, I have traveled to about 35 countries and am acquainted with people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, religions, ethnic groups and nationalities. These characteristics and experiences allow me to see the world from perspectives that are unusual for most people. Besides being open-minded and non- judgemental toward all my future patients, I personally understand the difficulties faced by people of color, immigrants and individuals from low-income families. In sum, my background and my cultural literacy will allow me to be a sensitive and culturally aware patient-centered care.

Throughout history, the Navajo tribe hasn't always been what it is today. Although the Navajos first location of existence is not well known, they’re one of the most studied Native American tribes.Their culture was affected by relocation of environment, wars between the Spaniards and the U.S. Government, and more. Even though most people would think in today’s world, Navajos don’t exist anymore, they have a population of 250,000. Located in the states of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, the Navajo nation covers 27,000 miles of land. Even through wars, The treaty between the United States and the Navajos, and the colonization of Christopher Columbus, the tribe has been able to maintain what they can from their culture throughout the years.

Cultural competence in health care describes the ability to provide care to patients with diverse values, beliefs and behaviors, including tailoring health care delivery to meet patients’ social, cultural and linguistic needs. The need for healthcare systems to increase cultural competence and personalize care for ethnic patient minorities should not be ignored. Healthcare systems should promote better understanding and communication between diverse ethnic patients and caregivers. Hospitals should design a system that caters to the needs of all the populations they serve and not just apply a one-size-fits-all approach. Becoming a culturally competent health care organization is a critical component in reducing health care disparities.

Department of Health,” 2011). The United States is composed of many different groups of people and diverse cultures. It is unfortunate that even today someone’s culture or race is a factor in determining the health care they receive and the quality of the care they receive (“Eliminating

The navajo tribe are also called the dine tribe. Who had lived in the southern dezert area like Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. The navajo indians were semi-nominate and were called hunter-gathers. The men were in charge of getting food and keeping the camp safe from predators,and the women were in charge of the homes and land. The navajo indians had kelp sheep and goats around and had used there wool for clothes. The navajo tribe is related to the athabascan people by central canada. They had traveled to the southwest before the europeans had showed up. There tribe had consisted of medicine men and shamen.

Cultural competency is becoming essential in American healthcare with the increasing and diversification of immigration. The Department of Homeland Security, 2014 statistics indicates over 750,000 immigrants received naturalization in the US. These naturalized citizens represent over 20 countries varying from Hispanic, Indian, Asian, African, and Middle Eastern cultures. A change in the way American healthcare treats these cultures is necessitated to provide efficient care and achieve positive outcomes. Douglas et al. (2014) guidelines are to empower patients to help diminish the inequities of their own healthcare. The guidelines for culturally competent care are meant to guide the nurse, nurse educators, and nurse managers in their competent treatment of persons of other cultures. These guidelines mandate a nurse use education, self-assessment and reflection, and diversification of the workforce to meet the demands. The ten guidelines are knowledge of culture, education and training in culturally competent care, critical reflection, cross-cultural communication, culturally competent practice, cultural competence in health care systems and organizations, patient advocacy and empowerment, multicultural workforce, cross-cultural leadership, and evidence-based practice and research.

In this great nation we live in today that has been vastly increasing diversity bring so many great opportunities. But with these great opportunities there are also challenges that are continually looked over constantly. One of the challenges is our health care system that fails to deliver culturally competent services. Cultural competency helps to enable providers to deliver services that are respectful to diverse patients. This helps with patients own health beliefs, practices and cultural and linguistic needs. This is why this training is needed in every health facility. Many doctors go through this problem not understanding their patient’s needs. If I were a doctor I would use this skill. Certain racial and ethnic minorities receive poorer

The Navajo (or Dine), which means “The People” are located on the Navajo reservation, spanning more than 27,000 miles, at the four corners of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. The 2010 Census Brief reports

Miscommunication, medication errors, and lack of compliance commonly occur in the healthcare field. These are just a few of the errors that occur due to the patient being from a different culture than the physician or healthcare worker. Those three errors alone have a huge impact on our healthcare today. If we could have a better understanding of other cultures that are different from our own we could have a dramatic decrease in errors and a great increase in healthcare participation. Training must be completed and must be done in more than one way. The first step is to make sure that all physicians and health care workers get the same nationwide training that focuses on improving cultural competence. How this is completed must be done in more than one way (Horwitz, 2001).

The way people interact and live in North America is to this day impacted by colonial thought and beliefs that have been enforced through both the government and social constructs. The impacts are present subtly throughout our entire lives in Canada without us fully realizing the changes it enforces in social interactions and natural body functions. This paper will focus on the differences between Indigenous and “western” ways of birthing affect women, and how the processes of birth have changed and are currently changing. The question that guided the research for this paper was; How does Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe births and “western” Canadian births compare and how does resurgence, found in traditional births, influence cultural revitalization?

The growth in presence of midwives in both Indigenous and non-indigenous communities is increasing, indicating the overall difference in experience between what would be defined as “natural” birth and what western medicine dictates as “normal” birth. Though, this does not include the use of “assisted” birth during emergency situations, which is sometimes the case even with midwife patients (Green, 2017). But, this experience gives the mother an ally especially through emergency situations, which is related through both Dorothy Green and Kim Anderson’s experiences; Anderson whose first pregnancy needed to be terminated was assisted by an Indigenous birthing center to ensure that she would be able to bury the remains of her child, which is needed for both closure and ceremony (2006). Similarly, Green had to fight to make Indigenous medicine and options known in the hospital, to ensure that her patients were returned the pieces of their birthing process they needed to move forward and perform ceremony (2017). The use of traditional teachings, especially in an event as sacred as birthing, helps to heal Indigenous communities and families, and a healthy community leads to healthy identities of mothers.

Navajo also called Dine, it means “the people.” They come from northwestern New Mexico, and they originates from southwest, as a “land of the people.” At first, the word Navajo from Spanish, then entered to English. Based on cultivated fields, this word also from Tewa Indian. We can understand that their ancestors in the southwest before they arrived. As a language, they belong to the Nadene and Athapaskan. In addition, most Athapaskans live in a vast inland region of northwestern Canada and Alaska. Their historic association between the Navajo and the Apache. Also, they both entered the southwest from the north and Apachean, as a distinct language small group. Until A.D. 1725, Navajo appear as a distinct tribes. As a foreign elements, Indian,