Heritage Assessment Essay

The incidence of cancer is higher in Black Americans, both men and women, than non-Hispanic Whites. Men are more likely to have lung, pancreatic and stomach cancer. They are more likely to die from prostate cancer. Black African American women are 36% more likely to die from breast cancer.

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

In this paper I will be identifying beliefs and values common to my family of origin. I will be using Purnell's Model of cultural competency and will explain the major assumptions of the model in relevance to my culture. The purpose of this paper is to provide the reader with a quick overview of the Asian Indian culture. One must be aware of their own culture and the culture of others in order to offer competent and culturally sensitive care and understand how their cultural beliefs may affect their health. (Leuning, Swiggum, Wiegert, and McCullough-Zander, 2002).

Health in all cultures is an important aspect of life. A person’s cultural background, religion and/or beliefs, greatly influences a person’s health and their response to medical care (Spector, 2004). These diverse cultures guide decisions made in daily life; what food eaten, living arrangements made, medications taken and medical advice listened to. A nurse must be knowledgeable and respectful of these diverse cultures and understand their importance when providing care. This understanding helps to build a strong nurse/patient relationship, increasing patient compliance, which ensures positive outcomes are met. Patients who are satisfied

Living in a culture that is unfamiliar to one’s own can be both overwhelming and a challenging process regardless of what country you are from. The Western traditions, values, and social norms can be quite different than those from back home. Oftentimes, when individuals relocate from their homeland to a new and more developed nation, they carry their own background, life experiences, and traditions with them. For this reason, these factors shape how they perceive and adapt to their new surroundings. To be precise, individuals commonly experience what is known as “cultural shock”, which describes the stress, disorientation, and the feelings of confusion that arise when entering a strange or foreign culture.Therefore staying committed to ancient family traditions can be difficult, which may then turn cultural transition into an ongoing battle for many. In particular, this paper will be analyzing the film, the Split Horn, through a social anthropologist's perspective and with the help of the Holistic model of health, including alternative understanding methods to further examine what certain families go through.

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 cultural health beliefs are specific for the Arabs with the main concern of the family. The family’s role is to indulge the sick person and take responsibilities off his or her shoulders (Salimbene et al., 2000 pg. 135). According to Meleis (2005 pg. 52), the family is central in both society and culture. When a woman is pregnant, the woman must be satisfied because “it is believed that the unborn child may develop a birthmark in the shape of the unsatisfied craving” (Salimbene et al., 2000). In the Arab culture, pain is harmful and should be controlled because the family does not want to see the patient

The findings of the interviews are identified in the table below (information including but not limited to what is listed). These families of different cultures ascribed their health traditions to different things. The African American family states that their health traditions are passed down by elders (grandparents), of both sexes. The Mexican American family ascribes their traditions to the women of the family, stating that it is a female responsibility to pass down traditions regarding heath. The Caucasian American family states that they received their knowledge of health from what is or has been proved by science, and usually each mother of the household is responsible for the health of the family.

This report will be investigating the various sociological perspectives on health as well as the models and definitions of health and ill health. These topics will assist in the understanding of how different people and different cultures react to ill health.

The Purnell Domains of Culture assessment gives a vast amount of information in regards to a persons cultural background, family and heritage that gives care provides a better understanding of their client or clients family. As a future care provider, I took the time to speak to Mrs. Smith about herself and family to gain insight on whom they are as a family and what influences them to be who they are today. Over the course of the domains of culture I have been able to increase my perception of who and what drives this family and how their beliefs came about.

Those barriers might compromise the quality of care if a patient and the practitioner can not communicate. In addition, race, ethnicity religion questions can give us information on an individuals cultural, ethnic and religious background, which might be useful in identifying cultural food practices and health beliefs.1,5,6.

When clinically assessing patients in care settings, it is paramount for health professionals to elicit pertinent information that could be crucial for delivery of care. This is particularly important in the United States because the increasing diversity in racial and ethnic composition of the population has presented cultural challenges that care givers must navigate to provide culturally competent service. Cultural competence during delivery of care requires sensitivity to the cultural, social, and linguistic needs of patients (Betancourt, Green, Carrillo, 2002). As a consequence, care providers need cultural assessment tools that will enable them

Readers of Alice Walker's, "Everyday Use", discusses how the narrator realizes that Maggie understands her own heritage. What does the narrator mean when she says, "Just like when I'm in church and the spirit of God touches me and I get happy and shout?" Does the narrator do something amazing that she has not done before? Some readers opine that the narrator knows what it really feels like to have family. Others say that the narrator recognizes the importance of giving. However, both these readings are not with the point. The narrator realizes that Maggie should have the quilts because they embody her heritage.

'Unity in Diversity' has been the distinctive feature of Indian culture. Whatever health traditions people follow, they are very strict on their eating habits. They eat more healthy foods and include more vegetables in the daily servings. Also for maintaining health they spend some time for exercise. For protecting health, people use various methods like rituals for self protection, superstitions, oils or water (Holy water) and specific dietary taboos that must adhered to, for example, after child birth women will have some restrictions on

The Asian and American cultures’ take on health care can be compared and contrasted based on four main topics: the cause of the disease, methods of treatment, patient compliance, and dietary beliefs. Starting with the cause of the disease, many Asians believe that ailments are caused by unexplained supernatural