The Heritage Assessment Tool

Cultural competence means working respectfully and effectively with all children, their families, team members and the community. It means being aware of your own values, beliefs, practices and prejudices and the influence this can have on your decision making. It means continual reflection on your work practices and working towards a better understanding and respect for all cultures. Being culturally competent also means being aware of dominant and minority cultures and the affect this has on the community and adapting your ways to interact with the children and families to make them feel safe, secure and supported (EYLF Outcome 1- Children have a strong sense of identity).

If nurses lack of understanding regarding community demographics and cultural differences, they can have unintentional bias, and stereotype patients due to a lack of awareness of the cultural demographics of the community they serve (Camphinha-Bacote, 2011). Cultural competence is the understanding of different cultures and how that impacts the provision of patient care. Cultural competence in nursing is defined as one willingness or the desire to understand a patient’s culture, the ability to learn about a defined cultures belief system, and to work effectively as a healthcare provider understanding the dynamics of the patient’s culture as it relates to their relationships and care (Kardong-Edgren et Al.,

Q 5 – Explain how diversity impacts on practices and experiences on person behaviour, interpersonal relationships, perception and social expectations of others.

Religion, culture, beliefs, and ethnic customs can influence how patients understand health concepts, how they take care of their health, and how they make decisions related to their health (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2015). As a nurse, it is important to understand that not every patient shares the same healthcare beliefs. A nurse must be able to perform his or her duties without judgement and care for each patient with respect for their own unique set of beliefs and morals. In this paper, the Puerto Rican culture will be discussed, from family units to religious and cultural beliefs, as well as how Western Medicine fits into their healthcare.

Culture competency is defined as one has the knowledge, the abilities and the skill to deliver care congruent with the patient’s cultural beliefs and practices (Purnell, 2013). As a nurse or a health care provider, increasing ones consciousness of culture diversity improves the possibilities for health care practitioners to provide competent care (Purnell, 2013). Nurses and all health care providers should be aware of other cultures to provide the best care that they can for that individual. Developing a relationship with diverse cultural groups involves good interpersonal skills and the application of knowledge and techniques learned from the physical, biological, and social sciences as well as the humanities (Purnell, 2013). I am choosing to select the Indian culture for my first assignment.

One of the most integral parts of cultural competency is the process of successfully becoming culturally competent. After synthesizing available research on the topic I have constructed four main steps in becoming culturally competent. Those include self-awareness, understanding various aspects of the culturally diverse population for whom you care for, practice evidence based medicine as it relates to culturally diverse populations and continuing education (Kodjo, 2009; Purnell, 2012).

Cultural competence is “the ability to communicate with, understand and effectively interact with people across cultures” (EYLF, 2015)

The way a person thinks about health, “whether that is our ‘philosophy’, our ‘worldview’, our ‘framework’ influences what we do as individuals in practice,” as well as how we deliver the health service. These elements allow us to think about healthcare in our own culturally acceptable way, this isn’t always an acceptable way of delivering the service to people with views different to our own. Cultural competence is an approach that aids in influencing the service and the education of healthcare professionals. (Taylor, K., & Guerin, P., 2010).

The medical field in relation to varied cultural beliefs and traditions is something that is important to many, yet rarely talked about by almost all individuals. In other words, the cultural clashes created in medicalization is under looked by a multitude individuals. This is because many do not experience the hardships first hand. For that reason, the thought of difficulties within treatments of health issues or illnesses does not cross some individual’s minds. Nonetheless, each group of people is unique, in addition to, how they perceive the medical world. With this uniqueness comes many groups of people who struggle to understand other culture’s beliefs and their knowledge on health and illness. The lack of knowledge an individual has pertaining

Using Anne Fadiman’s book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down I have created a cultural assessment of the Hmong people and their experiences with the American healthcare system. This small Southeast Asian minority known as the Hmong began moving to the United States towards the end of the Vietnam War. This brought a whole new set of challenges for the healthcare providers of the United States due to their cultural beliefs and native practices which made it difficult to perform certain forms of medicine. Doctors and nurses had to find different ways to treat these patients without violating their cultural beliefs or upsetting them. This was especially difficult because they did not speak English and translators were scarce.

The book penned by Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down describes about cultural deviation and language barrier with respect to medical beliefs among Hmong natives who migrated to the United States. The story has exhibited the impact on conflicting cultural beliefs with reference to medical care and their interpretation towards Western medical health system (1997). This is a heartbreaking story about Hmong native couple and has a daughter named Lia who is suffering from epilepsy at an early age of 3 months old, which is regarded as a serious medical condition. Epilepsy is the fourth most common neurological disorder that affects all ages and characterized by unpredictable seizures (Epilepsy Foundation, 2014). However, in the book the disease in itself is no longer a source of urgency to Lia’s parents believe that their daughter’s soul had fled her body and become lost. In a similar vein, the disease was not

Cultural heritage is what influences the values and fashion choices we adopt (Goddard, 2015). It is influences our family traditions and our family members. Most importantly, cultural heritage influences our zeitgeist or spirit of times that fits into our own history (Goddard, 2015). There are some people that take an interest in understanding their culture and their influences while others do not. The purpose of this assignment is to discuss my family’s cultural heritage. I will be including a cultural item, my family ties and traditions, and my current cultural patterns that reflect my lifestyle.

One of the skills/strategy I learned in my college course is ‘’Cultural Competence’’ and this skill helped in gaining the knowledge about culture in that particular organization in which I was working with. Cultural competency has real impacts on clinical outcomes. I have developed cultural competency during this course in order to provide proper care and education to people with diabetes. As I applied this skill/strategy with the diabetic people, I learned that their understanding was more recognized. Their nutrition is defined by the culture and environment they live in and I also found that they are habitual to things like that. Food and language are the cultural habits, which change with greatest reluctance in order to maintain healthy life (Goody, 2009). Through my assessment, I got to know many environmental and cultural factors, which affects the rural population in a

How does a person value heritage and what type of impact does it hold on a family with a substantial history? Taking a glimpse beneath the surface of family relationships and views on traditional heritage, author Alice Walker showcases a true grasp on letting readers see into the compassionate lives of three strong female leads. With her short story “Everyday Use” each character relatable and described in such detail, the reader can truly sympathize and understand the impact heritage brings to a family. Walker’s compelling short story “Everyday Use” explores how complicated family dynamics can impact the attitude towards heritage through the three female leads.

We begin this paper by questioning: What Culture is and how is it related to Heritage? Culture is people’s way of life. It is the characteristic of group of people defined by everything they possess such as language, religion, lifestyle, belief, attitude, food, rituals, customs, behavior, etc. Culture is a set of knowledge acquired overtime. Heritage, on the other hand, is the valued objects and qualities such as historic buildings and cultural traditions that have been passed own from previous generations. It could be either tangible or intangible or natural heritage. Thus, culture and heritage have one thing in common i.e. both are inherited from the previous generations. We all are indeed a product of former generations whether we are aware of it or not. Each individual undoubtedly carries many different sorts of heritage which may be in the form of physical material or spiritual values which reflect in their norms and traditions.