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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 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…