Free Essay Describing Healthcare Cultural Practices and Beliefs

As a current extern nurse, I learned various healthcare cultural practices in nursing school as a student. In the various healthcare systems around the United States, each member in a health center has varying views of the diseases and treatment. The cultural beliefs and practices vary among people in the field of medicine according to their origin of culture on health matters. Personally, the general view of infectious diseases among the people in the society is that they believe that diseases usually results from ones' fate, sorcery, sin-punishment or even other supernatural causes including some religious beliefs (Spector, 2002). During the nursing practice, I got to learn the theory of Transcultural Nursing. It is actually based on the humanistic discipline that is designed to serve the patients, organizations, communities and the society at large. The take home about the theory was that human care is defined within the context of culture hence culturally experienced care occurs when the culture care values are known and serve as the foundation of eloquent care.

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Above all, I got interested in the sunrise model in one of the sections of Transcultural theory. The section focuses on the areas in which the nurses are concerned about cultural healthcare issues. I acquired the knowledge of stranger to trusted friend techniques. I learned that the practice of this techniques requires dedication of spending more time with the patients and their families (Spector, 2002). During my practice, I experienced the phenomena of a stranger to a trusted friend when I used to take care of a patient who had religious beliefs. The patient believed in her Christian religion and was certainly sure she was going to be healed of her sickness through prayers by faith. In this scenario, the patient was placed in a condition to balance her religious beliefs about the illness with the closely related general view of the disease. The diverse cultural differences affect the patient's attitudes about medical care including her ability to understand and cope with the courses of the illness. Fortunately, the stranger to trusted friend technique helped me to spend more time with the patient and her family members who used to visit her. She shared her secrets with me including her religious beliefs and the power of faith. A few months later, the patient recovered from her illness and was discharged. She declared to me that her prayers worked and her faith had healed her.

However, there are various healthcare delivery issues within the context of the diverse ethnic and cultural communities in the society within the United States healthcare systems. It is highly important for the health care workers to set aside the ethnocentric ideas of the superiority and focus on learning and understanding the different cultural attitudes among the patients towards their healthcare process. On the contrary, the United States medicinal treatments are usually of higher technology than other traditional medicines (Spector, 2002). Therefore, the healthcare system nurses and officials may experience diverse description of the beliefs about the treatments of an illness that are totally opposed to the medical institution's methods of treatment. However, it is advised that the global views and beliefs on diseases should never be terminated or mocked, rather, the patients' opinions and beliefs should be respected and are essential in relating to the patients and their cultural beliefs. In addition, most research claim that the act of respecting the patients' medical treatments ideas may be the only way to treat the patients' illness.

References

Spector, R. (2002). Cultural Diversity in Health and Illness. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 13(3), 197-199. doi:10.1177/10459602013003007