Heritage Assessment Essay

In evaluating the Heritage Assessment Tool (HAT) two things became immediately obvious. First, the questions provided a fair outline and structure for identifying factors of culture, religion, tradition and environment and how they may influence the subject family’s approach to health maintenance and health restoration. And second, that the medical professional using the HAT must be aware of and sensitive to the scrutinizing nature of the questions and what defensive and evasive responses they may invoke. While conducting these family interviews, I noticed even when asking the questions of my own family that they were not immune to this scrutiny affect. As such, when interviewing the other two families, I was very attentive to them and

The Heritage Assessment Tool (HAT) is a set of questions used to examine an individual’s ethnic, cultural and religious heritage. HAT can be used to understand an individual’s health traditions. The answers to the questionnaire can be used to evaluate how an individual views of health maintenance, health protection and health restoration. The author will review three different individuals culture heritage using the HAT. The cultures that are being compared for differences in health traditions are Asian Indians, Vietnamese and Ethiopian. The review of HAT results will give insight to compare the differences of health traditions between these different cultured families.

The Heritage Assessment Tool can be adopted as a dependable tool to gauge, health maintenance, restoration and safeguard of personal, cultural beliefs. The adoption of health assessment tool helps meet the prerequisites of diverse patient populations to offer quality all-inclusive care. The following paper reviews the assessment of three culturally dissimilar families, and demonstrate how a nurse would continue with health promotion centred on the variances in health traditions between the three cultures. The three cultures include Hispanic culture, Native American Indian culture and White American culture. The objectives of this essay are

The Heritage Assessment Tool can be used as as a reliable tool to assess, health maintenance, protection and restoration of individual cultural beliefs. This evaluation helps meet the needs of different patient populations to provide quality holistic care. The purpose of this paper is to explore the Hispanic, Native American, Chinese, and the author’s own personal

In American culture, that sick family member often deals with the illness on their own. They may not even mention it to other family members. In the Asian culture if a family member is ill, immediate family members take on the role of the person to help them heal. In the hospital, family members bring outside food that they believe will help restore the Yin and Yang balance of the ill family member (Wong, 2012). The Chinese culture believes that health maintenance requires maintained balance. For example, they believe that a person’s ‘hot' energy can be countered by cooling remedies, and vice versa. These values are deeply ingrained in Chinese culture In the Middle Eastern culture. While the Middle Eastern Indian believes after a mother gives birth, she should not drink or eat cold items. She should only have warm, to maintain balance. The cold is also believed to cause blood clots,

The Heritage Assessment Tool is designed to “give nurses an understanding of the patient’s traditional health and illness beliefs and practices so that culturally appropriate interventions can be initiated. The tool is a series of twenty nine questions. These twenty nine questions are designed to determine a patient’s ethnic, cultural, and religious background,” (Flowers, D.L., 2005). Within this paper, the author will summarize the assessment results of three different families, all varying in ethnic backgrounds and culture. These results will then be used to elaborate on how a nurse would

Prior to the father having knee surgery he would play handball three sometime four time a week. He currently swims three times a week at the neighborhood YMCA and walks frequently with the dog. His wife is a Zumba dance instructor and holds classes five times a week. This author and siblings participated in tennis lessons, track, dance classes, and riding their bikes as children. This family gets together often for family gatherings and activities.

One of the families assessed for this assignment was a first generation Mexican American family originally from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The family consists of a young couple and two young children. Religiosity plays a big part in the lifestyle of this Mexican American family and this was evident in the rosaries worn by the couple. The couple regularly attends a local Roman Catholic Church for spiritual renewal and to pray for good health. Like other Catholics, they believe sickness is a sign of spiritual weakness and whenever individuals are sick members of the family pray for them (O’Brien, 2011). The family strongly prefers to prepare its own food, and its favorite dishes are traditional Latin American cuisines such as Chile, tamales and tortillas. Latin American cuisines are high in calories, high in salt, cooked in grease or deep fried, and contain lots of flour. When the family cannot cook they usually eat out, mostly in Mexican restaurants. Mexican Americans have a strong attachment to their families so they talk to their parents and siblings on an almost daily basis. Members of the family interviewed also communicate with their cousins, uncles, and aunts back in Mexico through online social media such as Facebook and WhatsApp. Communication between the couple and with other family members is almost always in Spanish.

During this assignment, the spotlighted cultures are Japanese/ German-American, Mexican/German-American, and my cultural background which is African American. This paper is aimed to show the differences and similarities in these families’ health approaches. Although the approach sometimes differs, the common goal is to maintain a healthy family.

As a measurement tool, heritage assessment helps a person appreciate further his cultural background, find strengths in his personality (based from his specific cultural background), and work on weaknesses that he has. Unlike other assessment tools, this is a quantitative-based approach aimed at threshing out a person’s family, religious and ethnic background that Influences the healthcare delivered to that person or to their culture The greater the number of the positive responses shows the person’s greater identification with traditional heritage. (Spector 365) .Based from the writers experience, a person needs to answer questions in a heritage assessment tool and these questions are

Over the past 20 years a significant social movement in America has amplified public awareness toward the promotion of health and disease prevention, known as Healthy People 2000 and 2010. It has been beneficial in changing the focus of health care from a reactive standpoint to a proactive one, which endorses national health and prevention of disease (Edelmam & Mandle, 2010). However delivery of health care objectives is not enough. Health providers must recognize and incorporate cultural group patterns, and variations within that culture to provide optimal care that promotes wellness (Lipson & Dibble, 2008).

Upon interviewing families from different cultures with the Heritage Assessment Tool, many differences were noted in their interpretations of health maintenance, health restoration and Health protection. For Example…

Applying the heritage assessment can be useful with integration into the health care system. First impressions go along with the proper approach. If you look at it this way first impressions are important in every culture. With the plethora of cultures out there and each family shaped by these values and beliefs a good approach is always an informed one. With a little common courtesy, topped off with some minimal knowledge of ones heritage you can get started on a good foot with your patient. So many cultures are part of the United States culture that being informed is our responsibility as

Culture includes beliefs, values, habits, traditions, attitude and language shared by a same racial group living in a particular geographical area. It is dynamic and transferred from generation to generation (Kiefer, C., 2007). Every community has its own perception about their health, illness and treatment. The health care providers should understand these differences to avoid misinterpretation for providing

Heritage consistency is a concept developed by Estes and Zitzow (1980, p. 1) to describe “the degree to which one’s lifestyle reflects his or her respective tribal culture”. The attempt is to study the degree to which a person’s lifestyle reflects his or her traditional culture, such as European, Asian, African, or Hispanic. Culture is a way through which we express ourselves. It is the sum of beliefs, practices, habits, likes, dislikes, norms, customs, rituals, and so forth that we learned from our families during the years of socialization (Spector, 2009, p. 9-11). Indian culture is very unique and diverse. Health traditions in India have its roots from the history.