Introduction
The health of individuals and communities is dependent on many factors defined by the environment and circumstances. Among the environmental factors affecting the health of the people are disease and illness beliefs of some cultures and communities. The type of health and illness belief found in a specific group of people influences the outcome of the disease assessment process. The United States continues to experience high population growth rate leading to increasing diversity in the delivery of health care. Therefore, health care providers need more knowledge and skills on how to deal with people from diverse populations to increase health care delivery and assessment outcome. The following paper discusses the impact of health and illness beliefs on the assessment process focusing on the role of traditional health and illness beliefs on the disease assessment outcome. Moreover, the paper discusses the influence of belief structures on the client’s response to an assessment interview with the provider and the influence of culture on physical findings.
Discussion
Modern educators in the field of medicine have a great role to play in educating healthcare providers at different levels and physicians on how to deal with emerging issues in the area of health care delivery. The healthcare sector keeps changing with new inventions brought about by scientific knowledge gained through evidence-based practices that contradict traditional health and illness beliefs. Hospitals should uphold and maintain rights of all patients by ensuring their staff is culturally and spiritually sensitive when it comes to health matters involving people from diverse communities. Traditional health and illness beliefs range from the cause of the disease, the treatment process, and death and have a lot of significance in some communities irrespective of the growth in the healthcare sector to end health disparities.
Traditional health and illness beliefs may seem to be concepts of the past, but some societies adhere to such beliefs to date. Some communities, especially those still following ancient practices are fond of basing their health and illness beliefs on traditional doctors’ guidelines. According to Vaughn, Jacquez, and Baker (2009), Anglo-Americans still hold traditional Western health beliefs that explain the source of illness and how an individual should go along overcoming the problem. Moreover, many communities believe that diseases and illnesses are natural happenings and no scientific approach is necessary to diagnose or offer an alternative treatment plan apart from what they traditionally believe. The presence of these and many other traditional health and illness beliefs influence the outcome of an assessment procedure, especially when the physician or the provider lacks adequate knowledge and skills on how to deal with diverse populations.
The impact of belief and structure on how a person responds to an assessment interview
The belief and structure influenced by traditional health and illness belief impact how a client responds to interview questions from the health care provider or a physician. Assessing people from diverse cultures raises a lot of issues for health providers that influence the accuracy diagnosis and treatment plan. Moreover, clinicians always encounter a bigger challenge when faced with a client from a different ethnic or cultural background. Clients respond differently to health providers when engaged in an interview. The physician needs to gather some information about the patient background, including the age, gender, number of people in the family, family illness backgrounds, and other relevant information needed to come up with an effective treatment plan. However, patients respond differently to these interview questions depending on their health and illness beliefs. On the other hand, traditional religious beliefs determine the type of respond that the client provides to the clinician. A client may decide not to reveal some important demographic information because of his or her religion.
The influence of culture on physical findings
Cultural beliefs and norms have an impact on the outcome of a clinical assessment process. The health and illness belief of an individual to inform about the person’s understanding of the disease or illness. The person's behavior concerning a specific disease change based on their cultural beliefs that eventually influence the type of assessment done with the client. For example, managing chronic diseases such as diabetes requires the client's total adherence to clinical advice on diet and medicine to establish positive results. A study by Sachdeva et al. (2015) on cultural determinants of health revealed that culture influences the outcome of a disease assessment process based on cultural beliefs, norms, values, and customs of the individual. The study that focused on the treatment of diabetes established that a person's perception about the disease influenced by traditional beliefs impacts the outcome of the assessment and treatment process (Sachdeva et al., 2015).
Conclusion
Creating a culturally competent healthcare team helps in avoiding issues related to health and illness beliefs that influence the outcome of assessment processes. The discussion shows that the lack of cultural competence among many health providers today causes major challenges in diagnosing and developing effective disease or illness treatment plan. On the other hand, communities have different views towards diseases based on their beliefs that challenge health providers because one need to provide treatment and care that will help get rid of the problem while observing the client’s cultural beliefs. All individuals thrive within a cultural framework that influences his or her beliefs towards a scientific medical approach. Physicians and providers should acquire more skills and knowledge on how to deal with patients from diverse cultures to promote a healthy society.
References
Sachdeva, S., Khalique, N., Ansary, A & Sharma, G. (2015). Cultural determinants:
Addressing barriers to holistic diabetes care. Journal of Social Health and Diabetes, 3(1), 33-38.
Vaughn, L.M., Jacquez, F., and Baker, R.C. (2009). Cultural health attributions, beliefs, and
practices: Effects of healthcare and medical education. The Open Medical Education Journal, 1(2), 64-74.
