...Heritage and Health November 10, 2012 Heritage and Health Three families one each being of Caucasian, Hispanic and Thai cultures have been explored using the Health Assessment Tool. This paper compares health traditions of these families of different cultures and discusses how understanding an individual’s culture leads to better relationships which allow health maintenance and promotion to be more effective. Let us start by defining key terms essential to this paper. Culture is the values and beliefs specific to a group or population and is an element of ethnicity. Ethnicity is “a reference to a collective identity, a sense of uniqueness within the larger society and a distinction from non- members” (Edelman, 2010). Values and beliefs influence our behavior and our actions and by knowing what influences a culture and recognizing an individual’s particular culture will help guide health maintenance and promotion. The National Alliance for Hispanics Health stated in 2004 that the longer a generation is in this country the further away they get from their own culture (CDC's Health Community Program). Therefore, by using the Heritage Assessment Tool a nurse is able to understand where a person’s heritage begins and how the person identifies with their heritage. As an example, this tool can help identify if a client belongs to a religious institution, in which, they may want to have access for support. If they...
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...associate-degree and the baccalaureate-degree nurse clinician. Historically there have been three routes of entry into the field of nursing. For the purposes of this paper, we will focus on the associates program traditionally offered at community colleges, and the baccalaureate program taught at the university level. Graduates from both of these programs sit for the same (NCLEX-RN) National Council Licensure Examination (AACN, 2015). Course study in an associate’s degree program usually includes nursing fundamentals and clinical care across the lifespan, but their main educational focus revolves around clinical skills, health assessment, and medication administration. Baccalaureate programs, on the other hand, encompass the entire curriculum taught at the associate’s level with a more detailed study of the physical and social sciences, nursing research, public and community health, nursing management, and the humanities. This added educational preparation gives the new...
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...Heritage Health Assessment Tracy Shrum Grand Canyon University Heritage Health Assessment A complete health assessment needs to take into consideration a family’s risk factors by exploring their lifestyle, biological and environmental factors, social, psychological, cultural and spiritual dimensions that all impact their health care. The nurse’s role with families is to educate on preventive health services, raise awareness of modifiable risk factors and assist the family in influencing healthy behaviors within their family. (Edelman & Mandle, 2010) One resource utilized to assess heritage’s influence on health is a 29 question heritage assessment tool that examines who you are, your heritage and how closely a person identifies with their traditional heritage.(Spector, 2009) “This tool is very useful in setting the stage for assessing and understanding a person’s traditional health and illness beliefs and practices and compare them to one’s inconsistent heritage, the greater the number of positive responses, the greater the person’s identification with a traditional heritage.” Heritage consists of four major components that affect one’s health care beliefs socialization, culture, religion and ethnicity. (Spector, 2009) Upon completing the heritage assessment tool, I realized I do not practice currently in the cultural foundation my parents promoted for my family. I was raised in a religious home with my parents practicing Pentecostal religious beliefs. Even though...
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...Heritage Sways Healthcare Perception Cynthia K. Martin Grand Canyon University: NRS 429V Family Centered Health Promotion November 09, 2013 Cultural beliefs are the foundation of an individual, families, and communities that persuasively influences the standards by which they reason and behave in every aspect of their life. Therefore, as healthcare providers, it is imperative that we consider a patient’s cultural heritage when assessing them from a holistic approach and planning for a desirable healthcare outcome. Madeliene Leininger brought to the forefront the concept of transcultural nursing which was founded on “the belief that optimal health for all is an essential cultural value” (Edelman & Mandle, 2010) and further declared that “our rapidly growing multicultural world makes it imperative that nurses understand different cultures to work and function effectively with people having different values, beliefs, and ideas about nursing, health, caring, wellness, illness, death and disabilities” (Edelman & Mandle, 2010). The Heritage Assessment Tool The Heritage Assessment Tool is useful for gaining understanding of the patient in regard to how intricately they are ingrained in their culture and sets the stage for determining how they perceive health maintenance, health protection, and health restoration through open ended questions. This tool not only affords a course by which communication of beliefs, values, tradition, and...
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...proven that culture has a significant impact on health beliefs and behaviors (Edelman, et al, 2014), therefore it is imperative that health care providers, especially nurses, be culturally competent in their delivery of care. It is not enough to merely be aware of the prominent origins and statistics of different cultures and ethnicities, but rather it is crucial to be inquisitive and focus on the family and individual as practices differ and evolve over time. Rachel Spector developed a Heritage Assessment interview as a useful tool to aid in understanding how strongly an individual or family subscribes to specific cultural traditions and practices, thereby strengthening the ability to provide Cultural Care. Cultural Care is a concept describing professional nursing care that is culturally sensitive, appropriate, and competent (Spector, 2004). Utilizing this assessment tool creates a way of determining an individual’s degree of identification with a given heritage. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the usefulness of applying a heritage assessment tool in order to evaluate the health needs of families. In order to do so, three Central California families were interviewed from different cultural backgrounds: Hispanic, African-American, and Polish. Each family interview will be summarized with an evaluation of how each subscribes to health traditions, and how each addresses health maintenance, health protection, and health restoration. Hispanic Family The first interview...
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...Family Centered Health Promotion: Heritage Assessment Tool Janice Ward NRS-429V May 31, 2015 Family Centered Health Promotion: Heritage Assessment Tool A critical skill in nursing is to assess multicultural patients in the USA today. The culturally competent nurse is able to evaluate the needs of clients and families through the use of a Heritage Assessment Tool. The successful completion of a Heritage Assessment Tool will provide the basis for understanding traditional health and illness beliefs and practices. The incorporation of the patient’s The Journal of Transcultural Nursing states as it’s 6th standard of practice for transcultural nursing the following: Nurses shall recognize the effect of health care policies, delivery systems, and resources on their patient populations and shall empower and advocate for their patients as indicated. Nurses shall advocate for the inclusion of their patient’s cultural beliefs and practices in all dimensions of their health care. (Lauderdale, Milstead, Nardi, Purnell, Douglas, Pierce, Rosenkoeter, Pacquiao, Callister, Hattar-Pollara, 2011) In order for the nurse to support their patient in receiving the best of health care it is imperative the nurse understand their patient’s heritage. “Health care organizations should ensure that patients receive from all staff members effective, understandable, and respectful care that is provided in a manner compatible with their cultural health beliefs and practices...
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...Running head: HERITAGE ASSESSMENT TOOL: EVALUATION OF DIFFERENT Heritage Assessment Tool: Evaluation of Different Cultures and Individual Views of Health Micaela Simon Grand Canyon University Family-Centered Health Promotion 429V Melanie Escobar RN MSN August 31, 2012 Heritage Assessment Tool: Evaluation of different Cultures and Individual Views of Health The Heritage Assessment Tool can be used as as a reliable tool to assess, health maintenance, protection and restoration of individual cultural beliefs. This evaluation helps meet the needs of different patient populations to provide quality holistic care. The purpose of this paper is to explore the Hispanic, Native American, Chinese, and the author’s own personal cultural beliefs from perspectives of health traditions, maintenance, promotion and restoration of health. The objectives are to identify different families and the own common health traditions based of the cultural heritage. Evaluate and discuss how the families ascribe to traditions and practices. The evaluation of these different cultures reveal similarities and differences in traditions that may help provide holistic optimal health delivery. The definition of cultural awareness is an individual’s awareness of their understanding between themselves and other backgrounds, attitudes to health and specific cultural values (Cultural awareness, n.d). Cultural competence refers to knowledge and skills that must be obtained to care for culturally...
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...Heritage Assessment Latasha Rice, WCC- RN Grand Canyon University: NRS 429v Date: 8/31/2012 What is a heritage assessment? A heritage assessment is a subpart to the overall nursing assessment. Assessing a patient’s heritage allows the nurse to obtain more information about a patient’s culture, including beliefs about health and values, this is important to providing cultural health care. One’s heritage includes information about their cultural beliefs and practices of the family and ethno religious community (Jarvis, C., 2012). Through a heritage assessment the nurse can obtain a vast amount of information about the patient/ family, including but not limited to, where ancestors were born, how many siblings they have, if the family originated in another country, how often time is spent with family, religion, if the patient prefers the company of people with the same values and religion or ethnic background, what type of foods the patient prepares, and the patient’s native language. This paper will discuss what the author learned from completing a heritage assessment tool, the usefulness of a heritage assessment tool when assessing a patient/ family/ community as a whole. This paper will also compare the health traditions of three different families (and cultures) to include, health maintenance, health protection, and health restoration, while identifying common traditions based on the author’s heritage. What the families ascribe their traditions to will also be discussed...
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...are the health beliefs of this person, what are their illness beliefs and practices? These questions are answered differently depending upon the person and their heritage. As healthcare providers it is important to have a broad knowledge base in regards to different cultures and people’s practices to deliver effective health care. In 2006, the population of the United States surpassed 300 million. The largest and fastest growing populations are the Hispanics followed by blacks, then Asians. With the ever-growing diverse population, it stands to rationale the importance of learning cultural aspects of health and illness. Cultural beliefs effect health decisions. Health care providers face the challenge of delivering effective care to diverse populations in a respectful manner that takes into consideration the values and preferences of their culture. Cultural care is a concept that encompasses the patient’s cultural needs, beliefs, and health care practices (Edelman & Mandle, 2010). This paper will examine different cultural health traditions and the effectiveness of applying a heritage assessment in evaluating the needs of the client. Applying a Heritage Assessment According to Merriam-Webster, heritage is defined as “valued objects and qualities such as cultural traditions, unspoiled countryside, and historic buildings that have been passed down from previous generations” (“Heritage”, n.d.). One way for health care providers to measure the importance of heritage to one’s...
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...Heritage Assessment Paul Bockoven Grand Canyon University NRS429-V October 14, 2012 Heritage Assessment Cultural assessments can be useful tools for a registered nurse to develop adequate plans of care, especially when it comes to education. They have limits however, as not every individual within a certain cultural ‘category’ can be expected to conform the way their heritage may dictate. Assigning a score to any person to predict how they may act, or learn, is contrary to the direction nursing care plans in general have taken. With that in mind, there is some value to using tools like the heritage assessment as a baseline, or starting point. The problem arises because of this particular tool being used to generalize instead of individualize. Developing a sense of a person’s cultural heritage and assigning an ambiguous score has no real meaning when the focus of a care plan is not supposed to take into account anything that is not directly related to the individual for whom it is being tailored. Standards clearly state that the assessment, planning and delivery of a person's care must be centered on the individual, and developed with them or their significant others (Rollin, 2011, p. 541). A person filling out the heritage assessment may, in fact, not adhere to or agree with it’s findings, may not understand it’s significance and as such, this tool could actually lead a caregiver in the wrong direction. The idea that any person who, according to this tool, identifies...
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...As a measurement tool, heritage assessment helps a person appreciate further his cultural background, find strengths in his personality (based from his specific cultural background), and work on weaknesses that he has. Unlike other assessment tools, this is a quantitative-based approach aimed at threshing out a person’s family, religious and ethnic background that Influences the healthcare delivered to that person or to their culture The greater the number of the positive responses shows the person’s greater identification with traditional heritage. (Spector 365) .Based from the writers experience, a person needs to answer questions in a heritage assessment tool and these questions are * Place of birth of one’s parents * Place of birth of their respective parents * His or her age when family migrated to the United States * Composition of one’s family * Number of family members which that person lives with * Degree of interaction with family members living outside one’s home. * Religion of one’s family * Religion of one’s spouse * Religion of one’s neighbors * Degree of belief in one’s religion and observance of religious holidays Based on these questions which was answered by the writer she found that she is Christian catholic, and was born and raised in India along with her family and parents. The Indians beliefs are very different than other culture. We still believes in strong family and have long families who lives together in...
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...Heritage Assessment Grand Canyon University 7/5/2014 Introduction Many times the United States is referred to as a melting pot of people, but this description of the diverse cultures and heritages that make up our nation fails to recognize the extreme individuality of the people here. Perhaps a better description would be a salad bowl, with each part and piece amazingly unique from the rest. Culture is a learned way of thinking and acting. “The behavioral, intellectual, and emotional forms of life expression represent a cultural heritage that is passed on from generation to generation” (Smith, 2009). Culture and heritage greatly influence all aspects of a person’s health. One’s heritage may determine a persons beliefs relating to the physical and /or spiritual approaches that people use to maintain, protect and restore health. The Heritage Assessment tool A heritage assessment tool is a set of 29 questions that address a person’s heritage. It looks at family connections, use of original language, religion, attendance of cultural functions and dietary habits and how closely an individual follows these practices from their cultural roots. Within this paper the author will examine the results of three families from India, Holland and Korea who took the assessment. It will look at how the heritage assessment ties in to help evaluate how closely an individual may follow common health traditions and practices such as health protection, maintenance and restoration from...
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...Running head: PERSONAL HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND ITS USEFULNESS Personal heritage assessment and its usefulness April 15, 2012 Personal heritage assessment and its usefulness INTRODUCTION: In this paper, the writer will focus on the usefulness of applying a heritage assessment in evaluating the needs of person as a whole, three different family’s opinions on health maintenance, health protection and health restoration. Also this paper will identify health traditions as regards to cultural heritage of the writer, then how the three families interviewed in this paper follow their customs and how important their traditions and practices are to them. Heritage can be described as the degree of which one’s lifestyle reflects his/her tribal culture. Cultural heritage exist in a continuum and a person can possess values both the traditional –living within the norms of the traditional culture and modern-living outside norms of the tradition. Spector (2004) The usefulness of the applying heritage assessment in evaluating of the needs of the whole person is outlined as follows; EFFECTIVE CARE: With the knowledge and application of heritage assessment patient will derive satisfaction and positive outcome in health will be achieved. RESPECTFUL CARE: Taking into consideration the values, preferences, n the expressed needs of the patient are met. CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE: By applying heritage assessment certain behaviors, attitudes, and policies that are...
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...Cultural Influences on Health Grand Canyon University Family Centered Health Promotion NRS-429V October 15, 2015 Cultural Influences on Health The heritage assessment is useful and gives the health care professional a detailed picture of how cultural differences influence health. The three individuals that were interviewed place importance on the cohesiveness on their families in health and illness. The family influences from the older members in their cultures place importance on folk medicine. When a member of the family is ill, they apply their faith and pray for that person. They value their religious belief in curing an illness with modern medicine. The food preferences varied somewhat from the different cultures however, pastries were common at cultural celebrations (Heritage Assessment Tool, 2015). It is evident that is important to be culturally competent before assessing a patient. It removes biases about a culture and the health care professional is culturally sensitive to give effective quality care and education. Polish Culture A large percentage of Poland’s population practices the Roman Catholicism religion. There is an order of priests, monks and nuns in the Roman Catholic Church. Rituals are part of the Catholic Church’s religious services. They encourage the continuation of folk culture like roadside shrines that are built and maintained by the community. There are yearly pilgrimages to these shrines such as Lankorona. On February 2 of each year...
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...Heritage Assessment Chiugo Alexander Grand Canyon University: NRS-429 V Heritage Assessment September 19, 2014 Heritage Assessment America is a melting pot of people from divergent ethnicities in the world leading to disparity in the healthcare system. In other to improve the healthcare outcomes in the nation, there is a need to reduce the insightful disparity in health care status amongst the various ethnic groups that suffer great disproportionate poor health. With advancement in education and technology, there has been an increase in the awareness of how beliefs, values, religion, language, and other socioeconomic factors affects healthcare promotions and quest for seeking medical treatment (Green & Reinckens, 2013, p. 16). In other to achieve the health promotion process as outlined by World Health Organization, we will have to perfect our application of cultural competency to health care and hence the heritage assessment tool. Using information obtained from three families, this paper will analyze the importance of using the heritage assessment tool in assessing, evaluate, and compare their cultural beliefs, and how they subscribe to them and then develop health plans that lead to holistic care. Usefulness of Applying a Heritage Assessment in Evaluating the Needs of the Whole Person Heritage Assessment Tool represents a complete overview of a person’s way of living. It encompasses a person’s history, system of worship, relationship to the immediate and extended...
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