Cultural concerns in healthcare Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Cultural concerns in healthcare - Essay Example Cultural competence in nursing can be defined as the ability of a nurse to meet the requirements and wishes of all kinds of patients regardless of the color of their skin, religious conviction, or even language. In this presentation, we will focus on Asian Americans and Islam in relation to cultural concerns to healthcare. Culture plays a significant role in healthcare today. Different cultures have diverse viewpoints or ideas on the reasons behind each and every disease or medical condition. In addition, different cultures have their own ideas in regard to management and curing of particular diseases, and have their own healers or traditional doctors. Therefore, all strategies aimed at eradication and treatment of diseases within the society ought to countenance with cultural beliefs. To understand cultural concerns in healthcare, let us focus our attention on a specific cultural practice and belief relating to the Asian Americans. An assertion by Yoo, Le and Oda (2012) elucidate Asian Americans cultural beliefs on the origins of illnesses. They posit that "An individual illness may have a spiritual explanation whereby an individual was being punished for his sins or possessed by an evil spirit, an imbalance of hot and cold caused by not enough off one kind of food or the other, a weakness of the will, an imbalance of the vital energy, or a magical explanation, such as an evil eye" (p. 271). According to Dayer-Berenson (2011), Muslims require their women to cover their bodies completely except the face and hands. In healthcare therefore, this practice ought to be respected. Since some forms of medical examinations have to be done in hospital attire, the hospital staff should avail hospital attires that covers their bodies completely in accordance with their religion. However, some hospitals allow Muslim women to retain their own attires in cases where the hospital is unable to avail an