Mexican Americans: Perspectives on Death and Dying Essay

“Americans can take come pride in the fact that attaining what the medical profession calls “cultural competency” is a goal of most health care institutions. However, achieving this goal in today’s health care environment, filled with diverse patient and provider populations, is no easy task. American hospitals are increasingly being staffed by and serving diverse populations. This creates the ideal breeding ground for conflict and misunderstanding among the staff and inferior patient care” (Galanti, 2011). To gain a more thorough understanding of this concept, I will be giving four examples or viewpoints that are completely different, when looking at the Hispanic belief against the Native American point of view.

In rural Iowa, there are few individuals who are knowledgeable of the Hispanic culture due to the small number of Hispanic individuals that have sought out care in the past. Recently, there has been an influx the number of Hispanic Americans seeking care in this area, making the delivery of culturally sensitive communication and care an important topic. According to DeNisco & Barker (2016), the nature of nursing care encompasses the need to be aware of cultural diversity (p. 581). Meaning that nurses need to strive for cultural competence to reach the societies expectations in the delivery of nursing care (DeNisco & Barker, 2016). We are going to take a look at how nurses can make a few changes that will make providing culturally competent care to the Hispanic population easier in these settings.

In 1988 Giger and Davidhizar created their Transcultural Assessment Model (TAM) to facilitate “…the discovery of culturally sensitive facts… (and) provide culturally appropriate and competent care.” (Giger & Davidhizar, 2002) The TAM was developed for an undergraduate nursing curriculum to train students to assess and provide care for patients that are culturally diverse. This paper will employ the six cultural phenomena defined by TAM to assist in identifying cultural attributes of Mexican Americans that should be considered by nurses in assessment and care.

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

Spiritual connection with the dead is also one of the important elements of Latino culture, which is demonstrated by frequent gravesite visits and praying to spirits. Death is always associated with separation, which leads to sorrow, and grief; however cultural perceptions and beliefs help to look at death from a different perspective and perceive death as a natural state that can be approached with love, respect, dignity, and tremendous family support. Latino culture supports their dying people during the last journey, and believes in afterlife, which gives them hope and helps to overcome unbearable grief of permanent loss.

The nursing profession is known for being a caring and compassionate career path that is loving and accepting of all individuals. The traits of many of us are based on our cultural background and therefore it is important to be culturally aware of different traditions and preferences pertaining to cultures that we directly interact with. Both taking into consideration the patient’s culture and recognizing the impact of one’s own personal beliefs are competencies that a nurse should demonstrate and are listed under the first standard of practice according to the American Nurses Association (ANA, 2015).

First, celebration and remembrance of loved ones that have passed on takes varying forms. Hispanic culture has the tradition of the Day of the Dead: two days set aside for celebrating the memory of the deceased by making altars laden with objects to represent and invite spirits of dead family members. The culture believes that the way to celebrate

In the preparation of writing this paper, I reviewed several educational videos from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (n.d.) that show healthcare providers interacting with patients from different cultures. I chose the video that shows a Hispanic man interacting with his surgeon. I chose this video because all counties in Ohio except one are seeing increases in the Hispanic population. There has been a nine

Nurses have the responsibility of caring for a diverse group of people. These people come from different cultures, races, and religious backgrounds. Religion plays a major role in patient care and has for many years. Cultural competency is a major component of nursing practices. Understanding culture is imperative in knowing what is important to a patient and how to address his or her healthcare needs. Understanding culture is also important when determining what suggestions to make about interventions for treatment. Culture is defined as many people interacting and sharing with one another their patterns of behavior, beliefs and values (Burkhardt, G. & Nathaniel, A., 2014).

The profession of nursing is more than caring for the physiological health of an individual. It also includes caring for their spiritual, mental, and overall wellbeing. Nurses, and all health care workers, need to take into consideration a patient’s cultural preference in order to maintain their spiritual well-being. This paper will address Native American cultural considerations relating to end of life using the Giger and Davidhizar assessment model as explained in chapter 4 of Sagar (2012) Transcultural Nursing Theory and Models: Application in Nursing Education Practice, and Administration. It will overview the assessment model, then apply it to death in the Native American culture as well as present nursing implications.

Asians and Mexicans both deal with death in different ways but one thing remains the same, they both take the dead’s ceremonies/ festivals very serious. Death in Asian culture can be very interesting. They believe that the afterlife is just another life, in other words they believe in reincarnation. With this way of thinking they would need a way of helping the dead reach their new life, they do this with rituals and chants. Asians completely focus their funerals around the deceased instead of the friends and family that

I chose this article because I find it interesting and of great help to any nursing and health care professional; I am Hispanic myself and constantly looking for better ways to help my community. I personally see my grandmother struggling whenever she needs to see her physician, as she sometimes does not understand what him and his staff are telling her. On another note nursing is an ever changing career and the Hispanic culture is growing at an enormous rate, becoming culturally competent does not only provide the patient with good care but can make the nurses’ job easier and more rewarding. I do feel that there should be more research on this subject; the best way to learn about a patient’s cultural beliefs is to ask the patient. I think that the population that the author intended to target is health care professionals; however, I know that any immigrant can benefit from reading this article.

In the Latino death rituals are influenced by their catholic beliefs. They have a continuing relationship with the dead through prayer and visits to the grave. Grief can be expressed by crying. Women are allowed to wail while men are not to a lot of emotion. Death for Mexicans in Mexico has more understanding of death because the country is religious, real, poor, and young. Death is shown by statues, art, literature, and history portray death. Mexican children start at an early age to accept death. Mexicans and Latinos celebrate “Dia de los Muertos (day of the dead) to remember and honor the dead Lobar, Youngblut, & Brooten, 2006, p. xx-a)

Today when people move across continents with the help of technology their culture and heritage moves along with them. Almost each and every continent is populated with people from different nations who have diverse traditions and cultures. Thus knowledge of health traditions and culture plays a vital role in nursing. People from different cultures have a unique view on health and illness. Culture-specific care is a vital skill to the modern nurse, as the United States continues to consist of many immigrants who have become assimilated into one culture. I interviewed three families of different cultures: - Indian (my culture), Hispanic and Chinese. Let us see the differences in health traditions between these cultures.

Immediately upon hearing the news of the death, I would reach out to the family and offer to visit at the hospital. At this initial contact, it would be crucial to follow the “ABC’s of Caregiving”: identifying myself, that I know of the death in the family, and that I care. If the family allowed me to visit, then I would go and sit with the family. My purpose in visiting the family is to engage in the grieving process with them, acting as a calming, non-anxious presence. When dealing with a grieving and mourning family I’ve learned that it is crucial to not come in with a certain agenda or to make light of the situation to ease feelings of awkwardness and discomfort. Instead, I believe it best to sit with the family and embody the presence of the Holy Spirit as I am physically and mentally present and attentive to the grieving family. This initial time with the family is all about their initial shock and grief.