Essay on Medical Anthropology

There are several hindrances that immigrant’s population encounter when they migrated to a new country. For sure, obtaining a good quality of health care is one of the most difficulties that the immigrants will be faced in the new country due to several reasons such as language barrier, cultural beliefs and lack of education. These elements could absolutely complicate the medical system. One of the immigrant population who began to migrate gradually to the United States in the 18th century is the Hmong. They arrived in the United States with their traditional customs. Hmong culture, in general, is entirely different from the way of life in the United States. In particularly, Hmong’s health care has completely different systems of health in the America. Their health care depends extremely on their traditional beliefs which are seeing illness as animism matter. On the other hand, the Western medical system is rationalism that means the medical system relies primarily on biomedical beliefs. As I result, the contrast between Hmong traditional beliefs and Western biomedical beliefs built a lack of understanding of both sides

I think that in order to care for the patient in a complete and holistic way, it is of utmost importance that we take into consideration not only their more obvious physical needs, but also their emotional and spiritual needs.

A Heart for the Work: Journeys Through an African Medical School by Claire L. Wendland is both an first hand account of time spent in an African medical school and hospital as well as a critique on Western medical practices. Dr. Wendland, an accomplished anthropologist and physician, provides a first hand account of her time in a Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world. Through this account she provides insight into the complete journey a student must take to become a doctor in conditions much different than our own. These insights and research are used to argue that medicine, or biomedicine as it is called, is part of a cultural system and is predicated on the cultural ideals and resources of developed nations. Wendland uses the differences in moral order, technology, and resources between the Malawian culture and our own culture to provide evidence for her main argument.

In our world of expanding technology and shrinking geography, people of different cultures have increasing frequency of contact and need for effective communication on a daily basis. Whether through travel, immigration, or international business, having the ability to communicate across many different cultures is an advantage in and of itself. Speaking a different language is an obvious obstacle to intercultural communication, but a greater and more difficult hurdle is to “speak” a different culture. To understand and comprehend and even apply these tiniest

Cultural diversity in the medical field is, at times, greatly hindered because of religious beliefs, language barriers, and the hierarchies of diverse cultures and these have the propensity to affect the continuity of care for the patients. “Every person has different aspects that constitute their identities, according to how they see themselves….This means that seeing an individual in terms of

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 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 Journal of Global Health Perspectives is an online open-access research journal. In addition to publishing primary research they also publish articles that relate meaningful experiences, observations and reflections from members of the global health community. To publish an article in the journal the article had to be E mailed to them along with a signed copyright policy and indicate the category of the work. Current topics of interest are Child health inequality, Maternal health in India, Ebola eradication.

Medical Anthropology: the study of health, illness, and healing from a cultural and/or cross-cultural perspective.

This text is a good reference point. This text is used to understanding communication within culture. This source also gave a better understanding

Today, we live in a culturally diverse society due to globalization. As our world grows, expands and become increasingly more interconnected, the need for effective interpersonal communication among differing cultures has become apparent. When people from different cultures interact with one another there is intercultural communication because different cultures create different interpretation and expectations about what is seen as competent behaviors that will enable the construction of shared meanings.

Anthropologists working in medicine, no matter how specific, specialized, or isolated setting, should make themselves familiar with the concerns of doctors and other professionals of health that are common to all areas of medicine, (Yale Career Strategy office, 2015).

Health is a complex concept, and global health adds to this complexity. When I think of health as a concept, I view it as being absent of disease. This understanding is a very biomedical approach to health and is a very narrow viewpoint of health. According to the World Health Organization (1948), health is defined as a “state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (a cited by Jacobsen p. 2). This definition does give a better understanding of what health is from a broader perspective. At the University of Victoria’s Global Health class, I have become to understand better the WHO’s definition and that it is linked to the social determinants of health. In this paper, I will reflect and analyze the learning that occurred for myself while taking the Global Health class, and how this knowledge has helped my nursing practice evolve at the local and international level.

Throughout this paper I will be pulling information from the Giger and Davidhizar Transcultural Assessment Model. It is pertinent for health care workers to be familiar with this model because of the growing affects that culture has on a patient’s view of disease prevention and health restoration. This model focuses on six cultural phenomena: communication, time, space, social organization, environmental control, and biological variations. It is important for nurses to utilize this tool while performing assessments on patients because of the substantial effects that each one has on a patient’s perspective. Every person is unique and knowing that no one perspective is universal will aid the nurse in treating each patient with culturally competent care.

Global health is defined as “health problems, issues, or concerns that transcend national borders” (Institute of Medicine, 1997, p. 2). Koplan (2009) proposed a new definition for global health which he described as an “area for study, research and practice that places a priority on improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide” (para, 7). Global health emphasizes transnational health issues, determinants, and solutions from an interdisciplinary perspective and blends population health and clinical care.