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Heritage Assessment

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Heritage Assessment
Angel S. Winnie
Grand Canyon University: NRS429V
May 17, 2013

Heritage Assessment The heritage assessment tool is a checklist used by professionals to gain knowledge of patient’s culture and beliefs prior to initiating care. (Spector, 2000). There are many different cultures in this country, brining different beliefs in health, illness, recovery, death, and life. The heritage assessment tool is an important measure towards better understanding of cultural competency, or recognition of diversity. A person’s culture, beliefs, heritage, and language have a substantial impact both as a patient and a health care provider within the health care system. (Spector, 2009).
The healthy people 2010 goal “eliminating all
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The non-Hispanic, white seeks medical care and pharmacologic medicine for restoration of health. Utilizes some homeopathic treatments to alleviate side effects and increase comfort while healing.
Conclusion
The comparison of the three cultures found that the immigrants to the United States maintained strong ties to the country of their birth or parents birth. Preferring to speak in the native language and maintaining ethnic diets. Each group married an individual from the same ethnic and religious background and maintained strong connections with family. The greatest difference is the timing of seeking out health care. The cultures that were not US born tended to utilize traditional medicine before seeking out treatment from a medical doctor. This is partially due to lack of access to health care for the Hispanic populations. The three families each believed that faith is vital to health and routinely attend church and participate as active members within the church. Knowledge of the individual’s culture provides insight into the complex beliefs and value system of various ethnic groups that make up the United States today. The heritage assessment tool provided an opportunity to view and compare cultures for encouraging incorporation of individual beliefs into a plan for health promotion.

References
Fridinger, F. (n.d.). Cultural insights: communicating with Hispanics/Latinos. Retrieved from
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