Health and Culture

There has been much study into how culture can impact the quality of health care, but not enough education on what can specifically be changed or how to change it. In The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down, a comprehensive example is presented using the implications of culture on the healthcare of a little girl named Lia Lee. Through evaluation, I have identified five major areas and examples of each that exemplify the clash of cultures presented in this book: Environmental Controls, Social Organization, Communication, Space, and

At a client’s house I made homemade mince and potatoes, with all the peeling from the carrots and potatoes and put them into the kitchen bin them emptied the kitchen bin into the outside bin.

I assume that in today’s world, there is a lot of information and scholarly research available that shows factors such as economic status, income, social situations, education, ethnicity, employment, availability of affordable housing and geographical (place where one was born and lives) conditions have a tremendous impact on the health and well-being of individuals, countries and communities (Amaro, 2014). Inequalities in health and well-being are created by social determinants and economic conditions for many in our community (Brannigan &Boss). The people that are affected the most are people with low income and minority groups here in the United States. This creates health disparities and unequal care (Brannigan &Boss). In many developing and under-developed countries, the situation is dire: lack of modern health services, illiteracy, poor economic conditions has created a cultural situation of desperation and unhealthy behaviors. Corruption by African governments is rampant. To improve the health and wellbeing of communities, we need to start thinking of how we can create a culture of health.

Compare the role of two complementary therapies with those of more orthodox treatments – M2

A Heart for the Work: Journeys Through an African Medical School by Claire L. Wendland is both an first hand account of time spent in an African medical school and hospital as well as a critique on Western medical practices. Dr. Wendland, an accomplished anthropologist and physician, provides a first hand account of her time in a Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world. Through this account she provides insight into the complete journey a student must take to become a doctor in conditions much different than our own. These insights and research are used to argue that medicine, or biomedicine as it is called, is part of a cultural system and is predicated on the cultural ideals and resources of developed nations. Wendland uses the differences in moral order, technology, and resources between the Malawian culture and our own culture to provide evidence for her main argument.

I wasn’t going to take this class. I’m already taking Emerging and Reemerging Infectious Disease on Thursday so I thought I filled my Professor Gezmu quota for the semester, but the first day of class I was reeled in. I’m pretty sure I was staring at Gezmu with the most dumbfounded shock-filled face of all time. Prior to the class I really did think I was a cultured person. I’m Nigerian in America. I can pretty much play the race card whenever I want and people think I’m so sophisticated. That was the totality of my racial, cultural, socioeconomic identity: first generation Nigerian Christian living in America from an upper middle class Jewish and Asian town. That was who I was, that was where my opinions came from. And to be honest, I read one of my father’s books about transcultural nursing so I thought that’s what the class was going to be about. Wrong.

In this essay the writer will discuss the colonisation of Australia, and the effects that dispossession had on indigenous communities. It will define health, comparing the difference between indigenous and non- indigenous health. It will point out the benefits and criticism of the Biomedical and sociological models of health, and state why it is important in healthcare to be culturally competent with Transcultural theory. The case study of Rodney will be analyzed to distinguish which models of health were applied to Rodney’s care, and if transcultural theory was present when health care workers were dealing with Rodney’s treatment plan.

As the rapid development of science and technology, our world is becoming a global village, people within the village can easily access to the opposite part once they can access the Internet. However, the border between geographic may be weakened while the border between culture still exists. The book Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman tells us a true story of culture shock regarding health care.

Throughout Kidders book Mountains Beyond Mountains, it is strongly argued that many of the impoverished nations around the world have extremely inadequate and horrible health care.

Cultural competence is a group of similar manners, attitudes, and strategies that collaborate in a system, organization or among experts and facilitate that system, organization or those professions to perform efficiently in cross-cultural states. A culturally competent health and wellness program provides services that take action to past inequities, existed realities, varied values, behaviors, and beliefs. It adapts advances to gather the diverse requirements of multicultural populations. Cultural competency can be implemented into our health and wellness programs by training the staff and health care experts of the programs to understand a patient’s diverse values, behaviors, beliefs, and modify treatment to meet the patients' community,

Today when people move across continents with the help of technology their culture and heritage moves along with them. Almost each and every continent is populated with people from different nations who have diverse traditions and cultures. Thus knowledge of health traditions and culture plays a vital role in nursing. People from different cultures have a unique view on health and illness. Culture-specific care is a vital skill to the modern nurse, as the United States continues to consist of many immigrants who have become assimilated into one culture. I interviewed three families of different cultures: - Indian (my culture), Hispanic and Chinese. Let us see the differences in health traditions between these cultures.

2) What was the background for the study? That is, what previous knowledge did the author describe as a foundation for the study in the “review of related literature?”

There are many cultures out in the world today that practice beliefs different than those in the United States. America is based off Western Culture and traditional medicine practices which focus on preventative and curative medicine. Most cultures around the world practice folk medicine, which focus more on the person as a whole with remedies and ceremonies rather than medicine and treatment. Even though each one believes in a different practice, all medical professionals should have the knowledge and awareness of each culture’s health beliefs to properly treat their patients in a respectful and kind

Different cultural groups employ different health belief systems that assist in explaining the causes of certain diseases that affect each and every culture. This also explains how the diseases can be treated or the cure that should be employed and the person that should handle the whole procedure. Patient education as perceived by the patient with regards to the extent of the cultural relevance in health care can play a crucial role on their information perception given and also on the willingness to employ it (Essex, 2006). Industrialized societies of the West like the US that view illnesses to be caused by phenomena that is naturally scientific, advocate for sophisticated technology use and medical treatments that diagnose and

Something that we as humans all need is not the latest gadget or today’s hottest trend. It is something more fundamental than that; what we all need is access to health care. A strong health care system is synonymous with a healthy living environment and a healthy population. In the United States, we might not have the best health care system, but it is accessible and well established in our culture. Many of the areas of the world that are poverty stricken and in the midst of civil war have little to no forms of health care, but these are the areas that need health care the most. According to Paula Saravia’s slides on the Review of Culture and Medicine, “Poverty wields its destructive influence at every stage of human