Cultural Competence and Health Beliefs - Essay Example

There is an important aspect in healthcare provision that enables healthcare professionals to deliver services to patients in a cross-cultural manner. Individuals have their own level of cultural competence depending on awareness, knowledge, and experience.

 Cultural competence enables patients and doctors to discuss health concerns in a manner that is respectful and patient leading to positive health outcomes. Culture influences patients' behavior and attitude to an illness, its causes, treatment and ultimately healing. Examples are in terminally ill patients e.g. cancer or diabetes. Depending on a patient’s culture, they may take it as a curse or punishment from God, witchcraft, or a death sentence.

A healthcare provider must therefore be aware of all the negative perceptions of the patient toward the illness and based on this, they are able to break the news to the patient. It will also aid the provider in knowing how to inform the patient about the disease until they understand. This will aid the patient in accepting treatment and also give a positive attitude towards the management of the illness.

Health belief can be discussed using the health belief model. It was developed by Irwin M. Rosenstock in 1966 to study the uptake of health services by patients. The original model consisted of four concepts: Perceived susceptibility (risk of getting a condition), perceived severity (seriousness of the condition, and its potential consequences), perceived barriers (adoption of the treatment and its side effects), perceived benefits (the positive consequences of adopting the treatment). Health beliefs are affected by an individual’s perception, social interactions and consequences (Dean and Fenton, 2010).

A case study would be the disease Diabetes. Many individuals believe that they can get diabetes as a result of genetic predisposal, unhealthy lifestyle or old age. There is the belief that the consequences of diabetes are grave and should be avoided. There is a belief that recommended eating healthy, proper exercise and regular check-ups to prevent diabetes and aid in early detection. People also identify their personal barriers to healthy eating and regular exercise i.e., busy work schedules and explore ways to reduce these barriers by eating processed foods and less exercise, leading to obesity and increased risk of diabetes. The media has increased information available on diabetes, posters are placed all over and the internet provides information on diabetes, risks, prevention and management.

Social factors closely related to cultural factors are also determinants of an individual’s health. Social factors include age, gender, sexual orientation, some cultural practices, religious groups and beliefs among others. They greatly influence the health perspectives of both healthcare providers and patients. In some hospitals, healthcare providers may not provide medical services to say homosexuals, due to the presence of disease in unusual places (Dean and Fenton, 2010).

Religious beliefs have for a long time affected healthcare providers’ efforts of providing contraceptives to women. Economic factors may influence a woman’s choice of delivery, home births or hospital deliveries.