Heritage Assessment
Heritage is who we are, where we come from, it’s our history. Traditionally the word heritage means one back ground or tradition. Each individual’s heritage varies between different cultures and consists of determination of one’s ethnic, religious, and cultural background (Spector, 2009). The heritage assessment tool helps healthcare professionals evaluate someone’s physical, mental, and spiritual beliefs which in turn helps with determining traditional health methods such as health maintenance, health protection, and health restoration. It also helps in opening a pathway for effective communication between the patient and health care provider to understand ones culture, beliefs, as well as their health
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Some believe illness comes from Satan and not living according to God’s will. The Chinese culture puts little emphasis on individual feelings and a lot of emphasis on family devotion and loyalty. A like with the Hispanic culture, when making decisions about health care the whole family is usually involved. Religion and traditions are very important in the Chinese culture. They will usually follow in their ancestors footsteps. Health protection deals with how one maintains and protects their health on a daily basis (Spector, 2009). Many cultures have their own rituals and beliefs they adhere to, to help protect their health. Hispanics believe in an imbalance between hot and cold as a sign of illness. In the event there is a disturbance they believe “Pasmo” could happen which is paralysis of the face or limbs due to the disturbance of the imbalance. Hot illnesses such as diarrhea or a rash should be treated with cold remedies, and cold illnesses with hot remedies such as penicillin. Another view is that cold should be avoided after extremely hot experiences. For example after cooking, intense ironing, or drinking hot coffee or tea one should avoid going into cold air avoid getting sick. Hispanics also believe in “Mal de ojo” or the evil eye. The evil eye is excessive amount of adoration. For instance if a child is complimented by an individual for being beautiful they can inflict mal de ojo on the child. This can cause the child to have
In the poem Heritage by Linda Hogan, Hogan uses the tone of the speaker to demonstrate the shame and hatred she has toward her family, but also the desire for her family’s original heritage. The speaker describes each family member and how they represent their heritage. When describing each member, the speaker’s tone changes based on how she feels about them. The reader can identify the tone by Hogan’s word choices and the positive and negative outlooks on each member of the family.
The United States has become a multicultural country. Everywhere you look, you see a plethora of cultures that range from Hispanic and African to Asian and American Indian. The varied traditions and beliefs of a multicultural country impact how nurses implement patient-centered care. The best way to provide optimal care in nursing is to become better informed in how different cultures view health maintenance, protection, and restoration. The Heritage Assessment is a wonderful tool to obtain information that can be used
Therefore, cultural heritage is the main factor in economic, social, and health promotion of people. Every culture has their own beliefs, values, and perceptions on health and illness. Then, it is imperative for health care providers to assess a cultural heritage on each patient in order to deliver meaningful care for that patient. By using the heritage assessment tool, the three interviewed families revealed some similarities and differences among their health traditions.
Chinese culture is also greatly embedded in religious and philosophical beliefs. The way a relationship is developed between and individual and the society differs according to various beliefs. In China, two common philosophical and religious ideas are Confucianism and Taoism. Confucianism
The Heritage Assessment Tool (HST) is used to “investigate a given patient’s or your own ethnic, cultural, and religious heritage…it can help determine how deeply a given person identifies with a particular tradition”. (prenhall.com). This assessment of 29 questions based on family, social, cultural, religious and immigration history can be very helpful in identifying the individual’s health traditions and beliefs, which can promote a more culturally competent R.N. Cultural competency is
The Heritage Assessment Tool can be used as as a reliable tool to assess, health maintenance, protection and restoration of individual cultural beliefs. This evaluation helps meet the needs of different patient populations to provide quality holistic care. The purpose of this paper is to explore the Hispanic, Native American, Chinese, and the author’s own personal
The world is filled with many cultures and it is important for healthcare professionals to understand most of them, therefore understand their patient. The heritage assessment includes the many factors that may influence a patient’s medical decision such as their religious beliefs and cultural background (Spector, 2009). The heritage assessment is very useful in understanding a patient’s preferred health approach to maintain, protect and restore it. Knowing cultural beliefs and values are very significant because in many cases, they are important to the patient and the beliefs and values influence their health choices. By
In evaluating the Heritage Assessment Tool (HAT) two things became immediately obvious. First, the questions provided a fair outline and structure for identifying factors of culture, religion, tradition and environment and how they may influence the subject family’s approach to health maintenance and health restoration. And second, that the medical professional using the HAT must be aware of and sensitive to the scrutinizing nature of the questions and what defensive and evasive responses they may invoke. While conducting these family interviews, I noticed even when asking the questions of my own family that they were not immune to this scrutiny affect. As such, when interviewing the other two families, I was very attentive to them and
When clinically assessing patients in care settings, it is paramount for health professionals to elicit pertinent information that could be crucial for delivery of care. This is particularly important in the United States because the increasing diversity in racial and ethnic composition of the population has presented cultural challenges that care givers must navigate to provide culturally competent service. Cultural competence during delivery of care requires sensitivity to the cultural, social, and linguistic needs of patients (Betancourt, Green, Carrillo, 2002). As a consequence, care providers need cultural assessment tools that will enable them
The incidence of cancer is higher in Black Americans, both men and women, than non-Hispanic Whites. Men are more likely to have lung, pancreatic and stomach cancer. They are more likely to die from prostate cancer. Black African American women are 36% more likely to die from breast cancer.
The Chinese culture is built around thousands of years of tradition. Understanding these Chinese beliefs and social influences may benefit you when attending to someone of this culture.
There are various cultures in the world. Cultural diversity has brought cross cultural interactions beyond geographical boundaries. Every culture has values and beliefs which reflects cultural and social influences, relationships, and personal needs in an individual. Health cultural values “shape human behaviors and determine what individuals will do to maintain their health status, how they will care for themselves, and others who become ill, and where and from whom they will seek health care” (Edelman & Mandle, 2010). Transcultural nursing is a practice to transform health care and help people of diverse cultures. An analysis of Leninger's vision for the work of transcultural nursing indicates that there are many barriers and
It’s crazy to think that the way you were raised is what has made you become the person you are today. Everyone has their own story about how they were raised, where they were raised, and who they were raised with. Each person has their own type of heritage with how they are raised based upon their family, where they were raised, religion, family traditions, values, and beliefs. The way you were raised in life has influenced your personality. The way you act and the way you are viewed as are both influenced by your family’s heritage.
Every culture has its own views of health care, diseases, and medical interventions. The way people of a given culture view health care affects how they handle themselves when they fall ill. For instance, the Asian culture believes that illnesses are caused by supernatural phenomena, which should be diagnosed and treated by means of spiritual healing or traditional herbs. Physicians and other medical practitioners should try to understand the cultural beliefs of their patients to handle them appropriately.
In Japanese culture, they believe some foods are categorized hot and cold. For instance, the vegetable with roots like radish and ginger are considered to be a hot food and consuming those food to maintain the body temperature warm and keep a good blood circulation. On the other hand, some vegetables make the body temperature cooler are cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes. More Japanese eat those vegetables making some salad and consume more during a hot summer moth to lower the body temperature. Hispanic classifies diseases “hot” and “cold.” The examples of “Hot” diseases are diabetes and hypertension verses “Cold” diseases are mistral cramps and pneumonia. (Maria Hernandez, personal communication, April 29, 2014). People believe that they can avoid illness by balancing and maintaining between. Moreover, in Hispanic culture, there is a belief called “evil eye” that uses turquoise to eliminate bad stuff, protect their health and avoid harmful event to them. People in the Philippine are very religious and their dominant religion is Catholic. They go to church and attend mass weekly. They pray diety and worship for (Mary Smith, personal communication, April 30, 2014).