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The role of medical anthropology in the health care system
Focus of medical anthropology in healthcare
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This paper seeks to show the inter-relationship of bio- medical professionals such as doctors and nurses in comparison with medical anthropologists and try to show their relevancy in the healthcare system and their collaboration in inter-professionalism. Medical anthropology is an advancing sub-discipline of anthropology. Medical anthropology is intended to provide a framework, which should enable students to identify and analyze social, cultural, behavioural and environmental factors in relation to health and disease/illness in any given society. Medical anthropologists are not medics or professional doctors but they are usually found within the health care system since they provide an insightful role of involving cultural aspects in diagnosis and treatment of diseases in the healthcare system. This is a perfect and unique example of inter-professionalism in the healthcare system.
In all human societies, beliefs and practises relating to illness are central features of cultural life. Although beliefs and practises strongly influence people’s health it is important to note that culture is not the only factor that influences health.
Clinically applied anthropologists are closely involved with healthcare and patient care as members of the healthcare system. They work with physicians, counsellors, lab technicians and many other paramedical personnel. They are solely involved with raising awareness to important cultural factors in health, some of them even practise medicine. This is multi-disciplinary inter-professionalism in itself.
The other medical anthropologists take a macro-approach and focus on political and economic equality which results to poverty and eventually has an effect on disease. An example of such an anthropolo...
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...o regard inter-professionalism in order to improve the health sector in any given society.
HEALTH SYSTEMS AS PART OF CULTURAL SYSTEMS
Arthur Kleiman (1980), in the book “Patients and Healers in the context of culture” defines cultural systems as a coherent whole of beliefs, norms, arrangements and institutions and patterns of interactions.
Health care systems is the patterns of beliefs about the causes of illnesses ,norms governing the choice and evaluation of treatment and institutions and settings in which the health care takes place as well as power relations that govern the interactions between patients and their healers.
No medical system can be said to be water-tight. For instance, the existence side by side of traditional spiritual healing traditions and western cosmopolitan bio-medical traditions has been reported in such big world cities as Amsterdam.
Jean Giddens (2013) defines culture as “a pattern of shared attitudes, beliefs, self-definitions, norms, roles, and values that can occur among those who speak a particular language, or live in a defined geographical region.” (Giddens, 2013). A person’s culture influences every aspect that person’s life. Beliefs affected by culture include how someone interacts within the family, how to raise children, the types of foods eaten, the style of clothes chosen, which religion is practiced, and the style of communication (including verbal, and body language, slang used etc.) (Giddens, 2013). In addition to these beliefs, health care practices are also affected by culture. The cause
As the quintessential Medical Anthropologist Dr. Paul Farmer’s book Aids and Accusation is the typical representative of the interpretivist approach which studies health systems as systems of meaning. So, this works under the belief that people make their own choices and are not connected to laws of science or nature. The research in this field tends to be done from an objective point of view, greater detail, and looks at culture and how people live their lives, therefore obtaining high validity because it is a true representation and is trustworthy.
Haitian culture offers a wide range of explanation for illness based upon the social, cultural and religious beliefs. The explanations are also dependent upon the locations and the class. They hold multiple views since they mainly rely on hybrid models which eventually lead them to consult for an illness from different persons.
Going to a different country or area of the world can open up anybody’s eyes to see that culture makes a huge impact on the understanding and practices of healthcare that seem to be so common to other areas of the world. When a person lives in one country their whole life, that person may not realize how different the life they live is from someone in a foreign country. If a person is going to receive treatment from someone with a different cultural background, they should be expected to get treatment to respects their own culture. Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences having such a diverse variety of students has their own cultural competency definition that states “effectively and comfortably communicate across cultures with patients of differing backgrounds, taking into account aspects of trust in order to adopt mutually acceptable objectives and measures”. In the book Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa by Katherine Dettwyler, the issue of culture and healthcare are greatly prevalent. Katherine Dettwyler herself goes to West Africa as an anthropologist and her horizons are broadened when during her research she comes in contact with how much culture has an impact on healthcare and everyday life.
Through showing the different definitions of health, the authors explain how those different understandings affect patterns of behavior on health depend on different cultures. In addition, an analysis of the models of health demonstrates even western medical approaches to health have different cognitions, same as the Indigenous health beliefs. The most remarkable aspect is a balance, a corresponding core element in most cultures which is an important consideration in Indigenous health as well. From an Indigenous perspective, health is considered as being linked, and keeping the connection is a priority to preserve their health. Consequently, health is a very much culturally determined. Health practitioners should anticipate and respect the cultural differences when they encounter a patient from various cultures. In particular, this article is good to understand why the Indigenous health beliefs are not that different than western medicine views using appropriate examples and comparative composition, even though the implementation the authors indicated is a bit abstract, not
Kleinman, Arthur M. “What Kind of Model for the Anthropology of Medical Systems?” American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 80, No. 3 (Sep, 1978), pp. 661-665.
The philosophy and practice is composed of many different systems of traditional medicine, which are all influenced by prevailing conditions, environment, and geographic area within, where it first evolved into WHO (2005). Although it is a common
Kleinman, A. 1980. Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture: An Exploration of the Borderland between Anthropology, Medicine, and Psychiatry. University of California Press.
Robert Desjarlais, A Reader in Medical Anthropology Theoretical Trajectories, Emergent Realities (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) 160.
Cultural competence is a skill essential to acquire for healthcare providers, especially nurses. Cooperating effectively and understanding individuals with different backgrounds and traditions enhances the quality of health care provided by hospitals and other medical facilities. One of the many cultures that nurses and other health care providers encounter is the American Indian or Native American culture. There are hundreds of different American Indian Tribes, but their beliefs and values only differ slightly. The culture itself embodies nature. To American Indians, “The Earth is considered to be a living organism- the body of a higher individual, with a will and desire to be well. The Earth is periodically healthy and less healthy, just as human beings are” (Spector, 2009, p. 208). This is why their way of healing and symbolic items are holistic and from nature.
“An individual’s culture shapes how he or she understands, seeks, reacts to, and expresses feelings about health care throughout the continuum of wellness, including presickness, sickness, and recovery” (Marzilli, 2014, p. 230). Understanding how culture can impact a patient, their needs, and beliefs can improve patient outcomes and improve satisfaction rates.
How does culture influence health? Give some examples of ethnic and cultural influences on the health of individuals or populations.
When one thinks of health, we think of our physical well-being, we think of the medicines we have to take to ensure our recovery in cases of illness, we think white-washed halls, doctors, nurses, candy stripers in their hospital clothes, we think vegetables and fruit juice, and the rest of that wellness-junk that the television infomercials make us buy, we think of sickness, we think of death, we think of life. We do not, or rarely, think of the underlying sociological implications of health and illness, through which we unknowingly dictate our actions, and through which our health manoeuvres through. Beyond the biological and natural conditions, through which our health is dictated, are the sociological factors affecting our wellbeing. It has been shown that the spread of diseases is heavily influenced by culture and tradition, and clearly, our socioeconomic statuses. Health therefore is much more than just an amalgamation of biological factors, but it extends to more socially-constructed sectors of our beings. And all these factors tend to procure inequalities.
My topic, Medical Anthropology, is a field of study that uses culture, religion, education, economics/infrastructure, history, and the environment as a means to evaluate and understand "cross-cultural perspectives, components, and interpretations of the concept of health" (Society for Medical Anthropology, pg. 1).
Melissa Cheyney is a medical anthropologist and licensed midwife. She obtained Master's in bio-archaeology with a focus on health and disease patterns in classical antiquity. As Melissa entered her doctoral program, her focus began to shift to the health of living populations. (Oregon State)