Heritage Assessment in Health Practices - Essay Example

Topic: Heritage assessment on three families Heritage assessment in health practices Introduction A family is described as the basic component of a community. It serves as the root of heritage in a society. Family heritage is an important aspect in a social environment as it provides the distinction between people thus preserving communal culture. Family heritage also helps in establishing personal identity s people are able to acknowledge their places of origin, culture and traditions. A family assessment tool is used in tracing the origin of a person. It is made of a comprehensive questionnaire that comprises of a list of questions used to determine a person’s origin, culture, social background and personality. Heritage assessment Assessment of the family heritage tool is done through tallying the positive responses of the person being questioned. The number of positive answers represents a person’s link to traditional heritage. For instance, this document takes a session study of three family assessment tools representing different ethnic backgrounds. The family tools comprise of an assessment of three families living in the United States. The ethnic communities studied include; Russian, Italian and Indian communities. The assessment tools dig into the family history of the person being questioned rooting from the parent’s place of birth to their arrival in the United States. This aspect helps in determining the intensity of culture diversification in the family thus the strength to its original culture. The assessment tool meets the social needs of the sampled ethnic communities as it focuses on unveiling the changes of the person being interview in relation to a new social environment. All the three families tend to preserve their original cultures and traditions through maintaining contact with the extended family back at their native homeland. Despite admitting to living far apart from their families, the sampled people being questioned expressed their deep relation with people back at home (Spector, 2000). This portrays a strong bond in family connection as well as culture preservation practices. As a result, it ascertains the analogy that a family is the basic component of a community hence plays a great role in the preservation of culture and tradition of a given society. Family name is an essential entity in the study and identification of peoples’ heritage. It carries the weight of culture as it acts as an identity tool to a person’s origin. However, many people tend to change their family names while in a new environment in order to fit in the novel social environment. For instance, the Russian family maintained contact with people in their original home but changed its family name in order to fit in the new environment. The Indian and Italian families did not change their family names despite the transition into a new social environment (Spector, 2000). In this case, the Russian family is prone to losing the strength of its original culture with the forth coming generation since the identity mark is scrapped off new family linage. The Indian and Italian families may keep their traditions and culture in the forth coming generations as the family identity mark is maintained in both cases. The family assessment tool also plays a great role in determining the health of the immigrant families as health practices is rooted to traditions and religion in many parts of the world. Religion is another entity used to determine the heritage of a community as well as society in an extensive role (Denmead, 2013). After changing the family sir name, the Russian family was forced to drop its original religious form to an unrevealed religion. Russia’s demography comprises of 75% orthodox Christians, 5% Islam, 1% consist of Judaism, Catholics, Buddhists and Protestants. The remaining 19% comes from different religious denominations (Denmead, 2013). The Russian family is not linked with any of these religious forms thus portraying a change of religion after settling in the United States. The Indian family is likely to have maintained a low profile of its religion as it only attends religious institution on special Holidays. On the other hand, the Italian family maintained its Catholic affiliation thus depicting the maintenance of tradition through religious practices. Addressing health maintenance, health protection, and health restoration Traditional heritage determines the health practices of a family. For instance, the Buddhist religion has strong cultural expressions of modesty. Due to this notion, a patient from this religious form may not be treated by a paramedic from the opposite sex. This aspect demonstrates a sense of traditional heritage in relation to health practices. Health restoration programs are designed to accommodate all cultural practices in a multi-cultural environment. Encouraging cultural diversity in the medical set up is one of the programs that can enable health restoration in the multi-cultural environment. The Indian culture practice dietary in which they adopt vegetarianism. However, this aspect might affect the health of believes as health practices advocates for a healthy diet which contains all the nutritious values. As a result, the Indian family is prone to health complication since it practices religion at home. The Russian and Italian families have flexible religion which does not force them to practice religion at home. In this case, the family can adapt to any health practices which are beneficial to their members. This aspect promotes health protection people can adapt to health practices without creating conflicts with the religious beliefs (Wintz & Cooper, 2009). In order to achieve health restoration in a multi-cultural environment, medical facilities ought to design programs that involve a team of paramedics from all ethnic groups. This is to accommodate the group of patients that practices ethnicity and prefer expressing themselves in their native languages. The heritage assessment tool depicts that all members of the three families prefer their native language in communication. Interrelation programs ought to be established in order to suppress deep traditional practices that hinder the effective provision of modern medical care. For instance, the Russian family is made of spouse from different ethnic backgrounds. This notion promotes diversity of cultural practices and eradication of unhealthy cultures. This factor addresses health maintenance in the society as it creates flexibility in cultural practices. The creation of a multi-social environment program may help in maintaining health as people from different ethnic group tend to learn quickly from each other as a result of deferent life experiences. All the three families only have friends from the same ethnic group. This generates a negative factor in enhance health maintenance (Spector, 2000). Heritage assessment is essential in the understanding of spiritual and cultural sensitivity (Wintz & Cooper, 2009). In this case, it helps in the designing of health programs to accommodate all people in a multi-cultural environment. Due to this notion, it promotes the maintenance of health and traditional heritage. References Denmead, E. (2013). Jarviss Physical Examination and Health Assessment Student Lab Manual: Elsevier Health Sciences Spector, R. E. (2000). Cultural Care: Guide to heritage assessment and health traditions (5th Ed.). New York. Pearson Education/PH College Wintz, S & Cooper, E. (2009). Health care Chaplaincy: Cultural and Spiritual Sensitivity. A Learning Module for Health for Health Care Professionals. Ottawa. Ottawa University Press. 1(4). Retrieved Oct 28 2014. Pp. 1-50 Read More