Envision your family, compelled to escape your nation out of dread for your freedom and life. At the same time, you abandon all belongings, and experience serious emotional issues and you maybe have to separate from your family. In the midst of it all you finally at last settle down in another area, you battle to coordinate into another nation, confronting communication obstructions and an insufficient comprehension of the new nation's way of life and traditions. While a large portion of us and our families are sufficiently fortunate to go to rest every night not stressing over roughness or mistreatment, a few of us are most certainly not. The novel, “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” by Anne Fadiman, describes a narrative around a …show more content…
Social boundaries and many misunderstandings kept Lia from getting the right amounts of recommended prescription. This caused her doctors to become uncertain on whether or not that she was getting the right combinations and amount of her medication. Lia’s parents were having a hard time understanding and were unable to comprehend or correspond with the healing directions to cure Lia, the doctors saw this as the Lee's being resistant. One of Lia’s health provider’s at the time wrote, “Father had become more and more reluctant to give medication at all because he feels that the medicines are causing the seizures and also the fever (Fadiman, 50).” Lia’s doctors at the hospital did not understand the Hmong perspectives of medical services are totally inverse of the common American view, nor did they care to try and understand. On the other hand, it is not unusual for Hmong patients to remain respectful when they are given orders by their physician. By acting aware and seeming agreeable, they ensure their own particular dignity by disguising their obliviousness about the physician’s directions and orders in order to remain respectful. At that point, when they leave the hospital, they ignore everything to which they have settled
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
The novel, Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, tells her family’s true story of how they struggled to not only survive, but thrive in forced detention during World War II. She was seven years old when the war started with the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1942. Her life dramatically changed when her and her family were taken from their home and sent to live at the Manzanar internment camp. Along with ten thousand other Japanese Americans, they had to adjust to their new life living behind barbed wire. Obviously, as a young child, Jeanne did not fully understand why they had to move, and she was not fully aware of the events happening outside the camp. However, in the beginning, every Japanese American had questions. They wondered why they had to leave. Now, as an adult, she recounts the three years she spent at Manzanar and shares how her family attempted to survive. The conflict of ethnicities affected Jeanne and her family’s life to a great extent.
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.
What would it be like to come to a country and not understand anything about its health care system? To many this would be a very daunting task. Unfortunately, this is the scenario that the Lee family has to deal with in the book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. The Lee family, and the other thousands of Hmong immigrants, try to understand and navigate the complex and sometimes confusing health care system of the United States. As the book points out, the values and ideals of the Hmong culture and the United States health care system are not always the same and sometimes come into great conflict with each other. Lia Lee was unfortunately the person stuck in the middle of this great conflict.
...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.
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.
There is considerable evidence of the Lee’s having both low print and oral literacy. The Lee’s spoke very little English; they also were illiterate in both English and Hmong (Faidman, 1997). Another contributing factor to their health literacy was their beliefs about medicine. Because of the dissonance between the Lee’s beliefs and the American medical system, it was unclear if the Lee’s fully understood the cause of Lia’s epilepsy or the purpose of her prescribed medication. Their motivation to learn may also have been a factor; they believed they already knew what caused Lia’s epilepsy and what healing she needed. Faidman describes cases of successfully communicating western medical ideals with Hmong people, but Lia’s case is not an example of effective cross-cultural understanding. The Lee’s low level of health literacy severely impacted their ability to successfully understand and administer Lia’s medication, which may have negatively affected her health outcomes. Some strategies to improve communication suggested by Egbert and Nanna (2009) that may have helped the Lee’s include using plain language that is culturally sensitive, spending more time with the patient to ensure understanding, and using a, “...teach-back method, in which patients repeat back to the provider the information they believe they have just
...ulture is changing, Hmong are not all the same, importance of family, privacy issues, mental health issues, and small talk is important (Barrett et al., 1998, 181-182) . Overall, Barrett and others concluded that in order to improve interaction between patient and doctor all they have to do is follow these easy steps. First, is to be kind and have a positive attitude towards the patient and interpreter. Second, learn about each other’s cultures prior to meeting, to better understand each other. Third, better explain diagnosis and treatment options to patients. Fourth, improve translation providers need to get better interpreters who could concisely explain the consultation. Fifth, involve the family to make more thorough decisions. Sixth, respect patient’s decisions and there are still other alternatives to improve interaction (Barrett et al., 1998, 182-183).
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.
It is important to consider that the Hmong had their own way of spiritual beliefs and religious healing practices. However, after the community decided to exclude Lia from the applications and advantages of modern medicine, the condition of the young girl worsened (Parish, 2004, p. 131). It was not at all wrong to humanize medicine, but apparently, as a multi-cultural community, the Hmong people became too ignorant and indignant over the applications and benefits of modern medicine applications. Staying firm over their religious affiliations and conduct, the maximum effect of healing became misaligned and ineffective. This was the misunderstanding that should be cleared in the story. There would have been probable results if the Hmong community chose to collaborate with the modern society without needing to disregard or compromise their own values and religious affiliations and
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....
The Hmong people, an Asian ethnic group from the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam and Laos, greatly value their culture and traditions. The film “The Split Horn: Life of a Hmong Shaman in America” documents the seventeen year journey of the Hmong Shaman, Paja Thao and his family from the mountains of Laos to the heartland of America. This film shows the struggle of Paja Thao to maintain their 5000 year-old shamanic traditions as his children embrace the American culture. Moreover, the film shows that one of the major problems refugees like Paja Thao and his family face upon their arrival to the United States is conflict with the American medical system. Despite the dominant biomedical model of health, the film “The Split Horn” shows that
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At this point in time the Lees were demonstrating behaviors that the health care provides wished would of showed up sooner in Lia’s health condition. Two years later, the Lees are providing Lia with the adequate care that she needs. The Lees are making sure Lia is eating and is bathed every night. They make sure that she is groomed and dressed appropriately. Since Lia is not considered an epileptic any more there is no need for a drug regimen, but the Lees continue to treat her with Hmong medicine such as teas. When it was time for Lia to receive her bath Foua would join her, because at the end of it all she would be soaking wet. After the bath Foua took this opportunity to bend Lia’s arms and legs ( Fadiman, 2012, p.217). During Lia’s feeding