Heritage Assessment

In order to understand heritage and apply the Heritage Assessment Tool, one most know. What is heritage? According to the UMASS Amherst Center for Heritage & Society “Heritage is the full range of our inherited traditions, monuments, objects, and culture. Most important, it is the range of contemporary activities, meanings, and behaviors that we draw from them” (Heritage & Society n.d). Leaving one’s culture, belief, and country to a better tomorrow, could be exiting, adventurous but at the same time freighting. Therefore maintaining one’s heritage is the motor that keep this country different from all the other countries in the world. The diversity of cultures and the traditions passed from generation to generation is what differentiates one another. Distinguishing health maintenance, health protection, and health restoration between different heritages. The Heritage Assessment Tool helps health care giver the knowledge to appreciate the different heritages and an understanding how it influence each individual’s life.

Evaluation of how family subscribes to these traditions and practices is offered in detail, while offering insight and/or reflection.It is essential for nurses to provide culturally sensitive care to each and every patient in order to establish repor and maintain a safe working relationship with each individual. To provide culturally sensitive care to a nurses patient’s he or she must first assess their own beliefs, values, and culture at large. The nurse can do this by using the Heritage Assessment Tool. This tool shows the nurse how important their heritage is to them and if they have adopted their ways of life from their family’s history and influence. This gives the nurse a starting point

Every individual has a cultural heritage. Each culture views the world differently. Culture is an inherited characteristic and includes knowledge, beliefs, customs, skills, likes and dislikes. The fundamental role of cultural heritage is uniting, respecting the diversities and brings people together to face the future by informing, perceiving and give importance to the understanding of the past (need a reference) Heritage assessment tool was introduced for collecting information about different cultures, nationalities and build cultural competencies among health care professionals. It is used to investigate

A heritage assessment in nursing is a vital tool to learning about a patient. By finding out about the patient’s family and friends we can learn about their support system. If we learn how close to a culture our patient is this will give us an idea of how true they hold their beliefs or if they have went mainstream with the American culture. Doing interviews with different cultures gives us a look into their personal beliefs and can help nurses to provide better care and teaching to these patients. Some patients we will learn were born in

In the United States today cultural diversity is growing more prevalent every day. The report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM: Unequal treatment, 2002) presented information that racial and ethnic minorities of all ages receive lower quality health care compared to their non-minority counterparts. Every effort should be made to stop the disparities surrounding cultural differences while attempting to understand the cultural health behaviors, increase cultural

Important health decisions are made by the entire family. It is not uncommon for three generations to live under one roof and the oldest father is in charge. The people of Vietnamese culture tend to hide their true feelings or fears as it is considered rude to speak up or offer frank honesty (Kemp,

Culture and heritage are the properties that make up a way of life for a specific population. As referenced by South African History Online (n.d.), “Culture should be regarded as the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs.” Heritage is formed from the practices and traditions that are learned from generations

The world is filled with many cultures and it is important for healthcare professionals to understand most of them, therefore understand their patient. The heritage assessment includes the many factors that may influence a patient’s medical decision such as their religious beliefs and cultural background (Spector, 2009). The heritage assessment is very useful in understanding a patient’s preferred health approach to maintain, protect and restore it. Knowing cultural beliefs and values are very significant because in many cases, they are important to the patient and the beliefs and values influence their health choices. By

Culture is defined as the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society group place of time (Culture, 2013). The heritage assessment tool is a great method used to assess health maintenance, protection, and restoration of each individual’s cultural beliefs. The heritage assessment tool is often used by healthcare providers to help determine different cultural beliefs that may or may not impact an individuals care. The heritage assessment tool has been used to compare three different cultured families, health traditions, addressing health maintenance, health protection, and health restoration.

The care needs of patients continue to change, as the United States population becomes more diverse. Nurses will be required to be more knowledgeable and respectful of the differences in cultural and religious beliefs as this diversity continues. The American Nurses Association (ANA) states, “knowledge of cultural diversity is vital at all levels of nursing practice…nurses need to understand: how cultural group groups define health and illness; what cultural groups do to maintain wellness; what cultural groups believe to be the causes of illness; and how healers cure and care

Heritage assessment helps patients a chance to express their beliefs, and customs very clearly to the health providers. It also would help to meet the patient’s needs and understand different cultures. Nurses will get a clear image of the patient’s background and that will improve the quality of care and patient outcome through the heritage assessment. When we were child, did not notice that families and friends have different cults. However once become adult realize that everybody has their own different cultures and it is the part of life. The heritage assessments encourage awareness of another’s health practices, beliefs, traditions, and helping to know their own heritage.

The Heritage Assessment tool is primarily used as a device to evaluate health maintenance, health protection, and health restoration of a person’s cultural beliefs and values (Spector, 2006). This assessment helps aid in providing quality patient care in that it helps to meet and respect the needs of different types of people and their respective backgrounds (Spector, 2002). This particular paper serves to compare and contrast the ethnicities of Indian, Caucasian, and Arabic families using health maintenance, health protection, and health restoration as evaluation markers. The purpose was to identify and isolate different groups of

“Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health,” (The WHO,2005). Health promotion is the process of enabling people to have control over and improve their health. It examines the importance of including ethnic and cultural factors to be incorporated in health. The goal of universal education cannot be achieved while the health needs of all remain unmet. Health protection explains how people maintain their health on a daily basis.

The United States (US) is a multicultural society. People from all over the world reside in the US. There are many customs, religion, values, beliefs, and so forth, in the US. To be in the healthcare profession, it is vital and necessary to be culturally aware and competent to provide culturally appropriate, holistic care. One of the ways to learn about a person’s heritage is by using the Heritage Assessment (HA). The HA tool has 29 questions and is a reliable method used to collect data on the patients’ traditional heritage. This paper will discuss the usefulness of the Heritage Assessment (HA) tool, this student’s summary of personal learning, this student’s cultural heritage common health traditions, in addition to

Heritage Assessment supports national health along with the cure and prevention of a multitude of diseases (Edelaman & Mandle, 2010). Promoting the best care, the culture and beliefs of the people must be looked at. The Heritage Assessment can also evaluate the nurse, showing her where her beliefs and practices are, thus promoting a good patient outcome. This in turn will help her, him to understand other cultures without bias and prejudice. Beside culture, language is another important factor. Patients may only understand their own language or have a very limited understanding of the English language. Medical terminology can be difficult for people born in America, can you only imagine when you are here learning the language and then exposed to medical jargon. Translators, language lines,