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Culture Essay

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Submitted By colie71587
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Culture Essay
7/5/2012

Culture Essay There is no specific definition when it comes to the term “culture.” Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving. Culture is the sum of total of the learned behavior of a group of people that are generally considered to be the tradition of that people and are transmitted from generation to generation. Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another. Every culture has its own definition for the term, and every culture handles every situation differently, especially when it comes to healthcare. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive”, meaning that if people do not try to expand their culture or try to learn of another’s culture, it will not survive. We as health care providers need to take this into consideration when it comes to dealing with patients of another culture, while trying to maintain our beliefs as well. My family is primarily Italian, and when it comes to health care, I was raised to do things a certain way, but as I grew older, I found myself doing less of what I was taught because I found most of the rituals unnecessary. For example, when I was younger, chicken soup was the cure for everything. It was a home remedy that my grandmother always believed in; I still follow her recipe to this day. Another home remedy was the use of ice wrapped in a handkerchief to get rid of headaches; my grandfather was always using this specific home remedy because he refused to take any sort of medication. I grew up on natural

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