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Advantages and disadvantages of traditional medicine
Advantages and disadvantages of traditional medicine
Cultural considerations issues in health care
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Everyone is unique, each person contributes each one of their own ideas into society. People go through experiences that make them decide what career they want to pursue. I went through a life changing experience that changed where I was heading in my life. Additionally, this first semester of college has increased my awareness of health issues and how bridging cultures is way to minimize mistakes in the health care field. In The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down includes mistakes that could have been prevented. The past experiences that I have been through, my values, and my heritage can improve the practice of health care delivery in America. It was just another day of high school soccer practice during the spring break on a sunny April …show more content…
With Lia it was good to do a little medicine and a little neeb, but not too much medicine because the medicine cuts the neeb’s effect” (Nao Kao 100). Since the doctors did not know about the neeb, (healing spirit that the Hmong culture believes in) they never could have delivered their best care because Nao Kao and Foua would not cooperate and agree to give Lia her medicine as instructed. Hopefully, this situation can be prevented by educating potential health care students about cultures and the way they can affect the outcome of a …show more content…
My experience of being an injured athlete will allow me to better understand what an athlete goes through as I try to help them recover in my future career. It was really tough seeing the team play without me. However, it is important to consider the views of an athlete and as a health professional. I very much value the safety of every athlete, there will be some situations where I could be pressured from coaches and even the athlete himself/herself to let them play in an important sports match. My heritage has allowed me to learn Spanish, because I speak it daily with family members. It will allow for more trust between me and Spanish speaking athletes. A lot of athletes come from different cultures, experiences, and countries come to play on college or professional sports teams. This will allow for a better adjustment for foreign athletes and overall safety of any athlete. In my LEAP team’s presentation, language barriers was a factor in limiting physical activity in children. If hospitals and other health care institutions had more people that are linguistically and culturally competent providers. It would put the patient a little bit more at ease, if they can actually communicate with someone who understands their language. In the book, the Hmong liked Roger Fife who was a doctor because he followed the Hmong families’ requests and let them decide what
All informants and sources are listed according to the chapters in which they contributed. Her major helpers, such as her interpreter, the Lees, the doctors who treated Lia, and a few others, have a special thanks from the author at the beginning of this section. Fadiman consulted a vast array of sources from both perspectives of Lia’s story. She also read nearly all of the available literature about the Hmong at that time, which admittedly was not abundant compared to now. Overall, those she spoke to seemed to be open and willing to talk about what had happened. The doctors freely admitted mistakes they made or may have made, and showed an interest in learning where they went wrong so that they could avoid any future
In conclusion, three things could have solved the cross-cultural problems between the Hmong and the American doctors. The doctors should have had more compassion toward the Hmong people, who have been discriminated and put down for very many years. They should have been more understanding toward the Hmong's belief and worked with and not undermine it. Lastly to compromise in all aspects in a relationship no matter what kind is a two way street, and if one party does not respect the other then the feeling will be reciprocated. You have to come to a middle ground or everything will fall apart like in Lia's case.
...ation could have been improved between doctors and patients in simple ways. Interpreters were used and children went to school and helped translate for family members. These helped communication somewhat, but it wasn’t enough. There may not have been any other way to help, but some people tried to and doctors tried to be patient with the Hmong to understand what they wanted and to make them understand what was going on.
In the book The Spirit Catches you and you Fall Down, ethnocentrism can also be seen. Throughout the book the family and the doctors have different ideas of medicine/healing techniques are often disagreed on. It’s important for the doctor to see that biomedicine has its own intentions of saving patient through standard procedures and beliefs. Understanding those terms will shed some light on the culture of the patient, which has their own intentions, beliefs, and rules as well. Breaking down ethnocentrism to find an agreement is a good goal to accomplish in order have successful prognosis and healing. In addition, shedding the ethnocentrism will allow the doctors to see the different cultural beliefs and not judge right away. Although, some cultural remedies may not always work, it’s wrong for people to have the mindset of ethnocentrism without even considering their beliefs first.
Union between two quarrelsome objects can be the most amazing creation in certain situations, take for instance, water. Originally, water was just hydroxide and hydrogen ions, but together these two molecules formed a crucial source of survival for most walks of life. That is how marriage can feel, it is the start of a union that without this union the world would not be the same. A Hmong mother, Foua took it upon herself to perform a marriage ceremony for the author of “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down”, Anne Fadiman. In this miniscule event, two cultures with completely conflicting ideas came together to form a union. In this union, an American was celebrating an event in a Hmong way, truly a collision of two cultures.
Traditional Hmong’s believe in their Shaman rather than western doctors, they choose to detain their treatment by hosting their rituals to save them. A shaman is “a person who acts as intermediary between the natural and supernatural worlds, using magic to cure illness, foretell the future, control spiritual forces, etc” (dictionary.com). Hmong individual’s have a belief that ancestral spirits, including the spirits of shamans, are reincarnated into the same family tree. Hmong consider being a shaman an honor because they carry the duty of helping mankind according to Hmong mythology. Differences between Hmong traditional beliefs and Western biomedical beliefs create a lack of understanding. Negative health care experiences result in Hmong community members’ mistrust and fear of Western medicine. However, when there’s mistrust between a doctor and a patient there could be lack of treatment because of the differences between our ...
Within this critical analysis, I hope to show that the lack of communication and compromise between the Hmong family and the American doctors, was the defining blow to Lia’s ill health. I hope to do this by addressing the following three main points of interest in relation to this miscommunication; the views held by the American healthcare professions on the causes of Lia’s illness, contrasted with the opinions of Lia’s parents. I will then discuss the health-seeking strategies of Lia’s parents and how they were influenced by different resou...
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 Hmong child with a rare form of epilepsy, must enter the western hospital instead of the Laotian forest. In the forest she would seek out herbs to remedy the problems that beset her, but in the west she is forced to enter the western medical hospital without access to those remedies, which provided not only physical but spiritual comfort to those members of the Hmong culture. The herbs that are supposed to fix her spirit in the forest are not available in the western hospital. The Merced County hospital system clashes with Hmong animist traditions.
How would it feel to flee from post-war Communist forces, only to face an ethnocentric population of people in a new country? In Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, a portrait of a disquieting, often times touching, ethnography (i.e. a book that details particular data of an extended period of time an anthropologist spent living closely with a community of individuals during his or her field work) of Fadiman's experience living in Merced, California, which was home to the largest population of Hmong refugees, such as the Lee family, from Laos who suffered mass confusion when trying to navigate the American health care system. Because the Hmong could not speak sufficient English until the children gained language skills native to the United States, residents of California were not accepting of the Hmong community. Fadiman aims to better understand how knowledge of illness among Hmong and Western medical practitioners differ, which pushes the reader to understand how the complicate medical treatment in the past as well as the present from a perspective of an American observing a Hmong family's struggle with the system. In America, it isn’t uncommon to be judged for your clothing, your house, or the amount of money your family makes, so it is easy to believe that the Hmong people were not easily accepted into American society. As a whole, ethnocentrism, or the tendency to believe that one's culture is superior to another, is one of America's weaknesses and this account proves ethnocentric behavior was prominent even in the 1970-80's when Fadiman was in the process of doing her fieldwork in post-Vietnam War Era California.
Though Lia’s parents and her doctors wanted the best for her, the above barriers were creating a hindrance to her treatment. They both were not understanding each other and the interpreter was also not there, doctors wanted to transfer her to another best hospital because they were not getting with her disease but her parents misunderstood the situation and thought they were shifting her for their own benefit. In expansion to these convictions, Hmong likewise have numerous traditions and folks that are negotiated by those of the American standard and therapeutic groups; for instance, some Hmong customarily perform custom creature sacrifice and in view of extremely particular entombment customs and the alarm of every human's numerous souls potentially getting away from, the accepted Hmong convictions don't consider anybody experiencing obtrusive restorative surgery. The Hmong medicinal framework is dependent upon nature-based hypothesis that lets life stream as it may be, while the western restorative framework is dependent upon the modernized humanism-based medicinal science. So when Lia was dealt with by the American specialist with western pharmaceutical, Lia's guardians don't concur with them....
Although I have always been able to overcome obstacles thrown my way, I am aware that others have not. I have volunteered for fundraisers to raise funds for the community. I was a volunteer at a local hospital for 2 years and was able to interact with members of the community and learn more about the struggles that they go through. As a volunteer, I was not able to do much, but listening to them and relaying their message to their nurse did aid in making sure that their voices was heard and appropriate treatment was given to them. After becoming a nursing assistant, I was and still am able to help care for people in underserved communities. Some of them come in with no health insurance due to its cost, and others come in with illnesses and lifestyle choices that have torn their families apart. No matter the circumstance I will continue to do what I can to make sure that they have proper treatment and that they know that I will not judge them; I will care for them. I do not want to leave anyone behind because of his or her circumstance. Becoming a nurse will be one experience that will allow me to find myself in the care and service of others, to me, that is a beautiful
This was one of the main aspects that brought me to this crossroad that I am at now and that I faced at the beginning of my college career. When I decided to go to college I wanted to be a doctor, so that is how I started out. Looking at the challenges ahead of me on that path I did some research and decided to change paths and pursue a career in Health Services. In health services I can still help people the way I like and it also fits into my plan for myself. With what makes me myself I look at the crossroad I am at now and all I think to do is to keep moving forward and straight. Looking back is a different me and going left or right provides many new challenges, so forward is my only option. Even though I will run into many other crossroads and challenges on my current path, I feel the way I am put together I can overcome anything that comes my
The Filipino American nurse and patient?s adherence to health has evolved from simple beliefs to complex approaches in healthcare. This is mainly due to acculturation and education and the prevalence of social media. This module has made me reminisce about my elders who have passed. The knowledge of a patient?s cultural origin and beliefs can either aid or impede the practitioner in applying appropriate care. It is essential to note that no matter how well educated a person may be. The influence of culture can be either a heavy burden or an aide in his progress to
Which career would be the best fit. It also caused anxiety, for myself. I didn’t want to pick a path that I absolutely ended up hating. I knew I wanted something in the health field to be able to help people, but the question was which one best suited me. The more I thought about it, the easier it became, narrowing down my interests into one specific field, imagery. I thought a career that had these attributes was perfect for myself, hands on, interactive, visual and never boring. It was such a relief and exciting that all along what I was looking for was right before me all my life, I would follow in my father’s footsteps in the health field.
All of the experiences I had up until this date have made into the person I am today. I am very good at appearing confident, and in some area of life I am. I have extreme compassion for those who cannot help themselves and those that struggle to fit in. By finishing my degree in Human Services I will be able to do just that, and in the meantime find peace and move on from own