How Health Is Affected by Culture

“Health is influenced by culture and beliefs” (NRS-429V, 2011, p. 1). In order for the nurse to properly care for the patient, she must know and understand the patient’s culture. “Cultural care is a comprehensive model that includes the assessment of a client’s cultural needs, beliefs, and health care practices” (NRS-429V, 2011, p. 1). It is not enough to just know where the patient lives or where he came from. The nurse must embrace the concept of cultural competence and cultural awareness. This requires not only the awareness of the cultural beliefs and values of their patients, but also

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

Culture is a strong determinant of people's views of the very nature and meaning of

Culture is a very important aspect for health care professionals to examine when interacting with their clients. By having an understanding of different cultural practices, a clinician can more effectively treat a patient. Kagawa-Singer, M. & Kassim-Lakha, S. (2003) theorizes that patients resist lifestyle changes, and culture forms lifestyle. Therefore, if physicians attend to the influence of culture on health behavior, outcomes of medical care might well be improved.

On the other hand, western medicine doctors diagnose the problem by observing the physical symptoms, screening the blood, and perform various other medical techniques that rely on advanced medical education and training. Doctors are concerned with the physical symptoms and disregard the “soul” which in turn conflicts with the Hmong culture because they believe in souls and higher mental processes. Fadiman’s proved that the central argument was the collision between the Hmong culture and the physical disease treatment of western medicine.

This book addresses one of the common characteristics, and challenges, of health care today: the need to achieve a working knowledge of as many cultures as possible in health care. The Hmong population of Merced, California addresses the collision between Western medicine and holistic healing traditions of the Hmong immigrants, which plays out a common dilemma in western medical centers: the need to integrate modern western medicinal remedies with aspects of cultural that are good for the well-being of the patient, and the belief of the patient’s ability to recuperate. What we see is a clash, or lack of integration in the example of the story thereof. Lia, a

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is only one example of many that shows how cultural differences affect health. Cultural differences such as variations in beliefs, preferences, behaviors, recognition of symptoms, and expectations of care because of one’s culture, are some factors that influence decision making and consequently, health outcomes.2 For example, the Hmong’s cultural beliefs include respecting the patient’s privacy by not asking personal questions, asking them to undress, or take blood samples,

In the first synthesis essay, examination of worldview was identified as one of the most important concepts necessary to understand and interpret medical anthropology. Worldview is the reason that there are many different types of medical systems. As explained in lecture, these include diagnosis, healing, and some form of payment to the healer. The study of these different medical systems falls under the term ethnomedicine. Singer describes ethnomedicine as the idea that all medical systems develop from “particular sociocultural systems regardless of the scale of the society.” For example our US healthcare system, based on western worldview, is a hierarchy of administrators who tell the doctors what they can and cannot do. Our devotion to the US healthcare system stems from our need to label the symptom or disease such as nasal drip and a cough can be labeled as a common cold. The worldview seen here is the need for immediate cures to avoid interrupting our busy lives. On the other hand, in “Touching the Timeless” with Billy Yellow from the Navajo tribe, there are many steps to prepare for his healing ritual such as the sweat hogan, where purification rituals are performed, in this case, before a strong spiritual ritual can be done. Thus understanding the worldview that comes with the development of medical systems is vital to understanding why the practices are being used and being able to compare these medical systems cross culturally.

This paper provides an analysis of the work of Paul Farmer, and the members of Partners in Health exemplifies the three fields of medical anthropology (ecological-epidemiological, critical and interpretive). This paper hypothesizes that diseases can be caused by various factors while the other factors that are mentioned in this paper are associated with the cause.

Medial Anthropologist have discovered that the best treatment to health challenges are not what most people go to first. Many people do not have access to health care. Even in Western countries where we have access to health care we do no always go to a medical professional. Most people around the world apply their personal medical knowledge for dealing with disease, illness, pain, and discomfort.

According to Germov (2014), cultural factors that can affect health issues of working class are mainly concentrated on individual behaviours. Before searching several researches, I had been persuaded that personal habits causing negative health issues are individual responsibility because we could change our lifestyle on our own initiative. However, Germov (2014) insisted that judging the cause and cure of illness by merely the individual behaviours is called “victim-blaming” and is overly simplistic factor of inequality. From the different perspective, I could deliberate about negative individual behaviours of low SES groups influenced by social problems. As an example, poverty could bring about the adverse cultural habit of drug abuse. It is because that people in poverty tend to dismiss their burdens of poverty from their mind, contributing to them being addicted to drugs (Keeble & Stacy,

Three Theoretical Approaches in Medical Anthropology, the first major theoretical approach to understanding health systems emphasizes the importance of the environment in shaping health problems and how they spread The third points to the need to look at structural factors (political, economic, media) as the underlying causes of health problems and examines Western biomedicine as a cultural

A topic in the Faces of Culture class that interest me the most was the cross-differences in explaining health in the section of medical anthropology. The cross-cultural differences in explaining health focuses on how cultures around the world practice different techniques of healing a disease. In America, people mainly go to the doctor to get help when they are sick. I believe that many people only focus on the ways treat their illness based on their own culture and not aware that some cultures do not practice healing through clinical processes. Many cultures practice healing processes through symbolic rituals. When I first starting to learn about how some people think that singing, persuasion, dancing, or music will heal their illness, I

Medical anthropologists are engaged in using and expanding many of anthropology’s core concepts in an effort to understand the human body problem in a different way. What is sickness, how it understood and directly experienced and acted on by sufferers, the social networks and healers and how health related problems beliefs and practices fit with and shaped by encompassing social and cultural systems and contexts (Singer and Baer, 2007).

Every culture has its own views of health care, diseases, and medical interventions. The way people of a given culture view health care affects how they handle themselves when they fall ill. For instance, the Asian culture believes that illnesses are caused by supernatural phenomena, which should be diagnosed and treated by means of spiritual healing or traditional herbs. Physicians and other medical practitioners should try to understand the cultural beliefs of their patients to handle them appropriately.