cultural competency
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Medicine is a Humane Art: the Basic Principles of Professional Ethics in Chinese Medicine by Zhang and Cheng
This article provides a review of the history of Chinese medicine and the growth and development of medical ethics in this context. What I found especially interesting is the emphasis on the way ethics is addressed, how ethically right behaviour is promoted. We see that Chinese culture pays much attention to moral evaluation, which is expressed by the filial obedience, being respectful and nice to others independent of their social status, and in cherishing life, with appreciation of mortality. Confucius taught that everybody had an inner sense of right and wrong, which they knew by self examination, rather than by following laws and restrictions. “Benevolence is the core of Confucian…
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Notes on the article by M. C. Inhorn and G. I. Serour “Islam, medicine, and Arab-Muslim refugee health in America after 9/11”
From this article we learn that muslims do not agree on some common global norms or best practices. Their responses to medical problems and procedures, such as assisted reproductive technologies, are mediated by a wide range of ever-changing local circumstances and social forces. (p.937) There is a great diversity in the world’s Muslim population. In addition to sectarian differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims, the followers of Islam vary greatly in their religious piety. Some Muslims follow particular clerics, whereas others consider their primary relationship to be with God. “Islam is not monolithic and Islamic religious authorities are not in agreement about science, technology, and medicine—eg, for assisted reproductive technologies,…
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Notes on the article by A. Baez and D. Hernandez “Complementary Spiritual Beliefs in the Latino Community: The Interface with Psychotherapy”
The article demonstrates that the successful provision of culturally sensitive and culturally inclusive mental health services depends in large part on the level of congruence between the client’s and the mental health practitioner’s respective views of mental illness and its treatment. So, it is vital for mental health professionals to draw the distinction in these matters in order to find the best approach to their patients. This article is intended to help non-Latino mental health practitioners reach that “level of understanding and respect, and also to achieve the adjustment of clinical techniques necessary for better cultural responsiveness to these patients, a matter seldom addressed directly in the mental health literature”…
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Notes on the article by A.Viladrich “Beyond the Supernatural: Latino Healers Treating Latino Immigrants in NYC”
The article explores the role of Latino folk healers in adequately addressing immigrants’ health needs, including their potential to complement or replace formal access to health care services. “More than competing with other healing businesses, [Latino healers] are filling a gap by providing cultural meaningful treatments while satisfying Latinos’ unmet needs…. Botanicas offer personalized response to problems that would either receive little attention or remain unattended otherwise”(p. 144) This quote states an important point – that besides the actual healing practice, besides the ceremonies and selling the herbal supplements, the botanicas provide the necessary spiritual care to patients, who would not be able to receive this care anywhere else. This…
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Notes on article by S. Saha, MD et al. “Patient Centeredness, Cultural Competence and Healthcare Quality”
While the patient centerdness (PC) and cultural competence (CC) essentially have developed from two different focus points, they both aim at improving the quality of healthcare. The people who have worked on the development of the models essentially seemed to have similar understanding of the values of the World and and followed similar intentions to help patients feel better not only on a physical level. “Just as proponents of cultural competence might embrace most aspects of patient centeredness, it is likely that propo- nents of patient centeredness would also embrace these additional features of cultural competence. “ p.1281 This quote sums up this idea – that to be a proponent…
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Notes on the article by by E-shien Chang et al. “Integrating cultural humility into health care professional education and training.”
The article talks about the necessity to expand cultural sensitivity with the emphasis on cultural humility. The authors brings us several examples of how important cultural humility is and how destructive its lack can be. They make a strong point in that the model they are proposing (QIAN model) would allow to correct some faults in patient care such as imbalance of power, which often prevents completely open communication and thus does not allow the doctor to see the full picture. The inclusive nature of this model is adaptable to different cultural and ethnic groups and can be used to enhance cross-cultural communication skills of very different healthcare professionals. While…
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Notes on the article by by Patricia J. Kelly, PhD et al. “Exploring the Theoretical Framework of Cultural Competency Training”
The article explores the theoretical frameworks of cultural competency training for Physician Assistants. It discusses the importance of such training, the main theories of health care cultural competency, and a brief history of its implementation. They propose shifting the view of cultural competency training from being one of the additional topics in the curriculum of medical students to being one of the foundation courses. The authors explain that teaching cultural norms and exposing the students to cultural diversity will not train the students how to appropriately elicit cultural information from patients. They point out that such authors as Shapiro, Lie, Gutierrez, and Zhung have discovered that medical students “tend to…
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Notes on the article by William R. LaFleur “Body”
“Critical Terms for Religious Studies” edited by Mark C. Taylor This work is dedicated to the exploration of the relationship between religion and body. First of all, LaFleur provides a short overview on the history of this relationship. We see that while most cultured initially insisted on accepting our bodies the way they were (given to us by God), there have also been many physical alterations made to the bodies throughout history on the basis of religious belief. While Christianity has been taking pride in being the one religion that does not promote any changes in the body, it was the first one to apply the term corpses, meaning that…
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Notes on “Shattering Culture: American Medicine Responds to Cultural Diversity” by Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good (Editor) et al.
The world is changing, the people are moving, the demographics are being reshaped, especially in the US where there are so many immigrants. This book presents a collection of works that describe how are health-care institutions responding to this changing demographics, including issues within the institutional policies and the personal human dilemmas in serving the diverse and constantly changing group of patients. Although it is clear that cultural diversity often covaries with racial and ethnic classifications, we must remember that cultural diversity can exist within ethnic groups as well, and other dimensions of culture (such as those deriving from class background or education). Through various examples we are shown that…
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Notes on “Medicine, Religion and Health” by Koenig
In his book “Medicine, Religion and Health” Koenig raises several important questions about the role of spirituality in the healthcare settings. First of all, he address the problem of definition of the term spirituality. As it is shown, due to the fact that spirituality in itself is a very private matter, it can be described differently by every person. Koenig brings up several definitions of different researchers and eventually offers his own. In his opinion, spirituality should be linked to religion even though it does not necessarily imply religious belief. While there may be different opinions on the precise definition of spirituality, Koenig points out that in the clinical settings…