A Transcultural Immersion Experience, Essay Example

Appalachian people are very independent and very contented with the places they live in, and their ways of life. They are friendly, kind, and helpful. The Appalachian have deep mistrust of new people and they resist change. Some of the characteristic of Appalachian culture are that they are independent, and have a rich sense of equality. These characteristics of the Appalachian culture are perhaps the cause of Roy rejecting the offer to become supervisor.

The key to building a trusting relationship with Mrs. Kapp is communication. To build a relationship, it is important to first know her, know her likes and dislikes, her interests, and her family life. It is also important that you communicate with her freely, let her understand her treatment. The idea is to let her see the nurse as a person; she can be open and share her concerns without being judged.

The problem of poor adherence to medication can be addressed by,

Simplifying the regime characteristics– sometimes the complexity of the regime can affect the adherence, for instance, the regime can be matched to patient daily activity, or if possible reducing the regime (Easterby et al, 2012, p.82).

Imparting knowledge– research has indicated that the patients’ understanding of their condition and treatment can improve adherence. Physicians can provide sufficient patient education, for instance, by limiting their instructions to four points, using the language, which patients can understand, or by supplementing oral instruction with written instruction.

 Modifying patient belief– Physician can optimize behavior change by ensuring patients perceive themselves to be at risk due to lack of adoption, or perceive the medication to be serious.

Due to the Appalachian culture, we should rely on our own – Ruth will tend to first seek the assistance of traditional medicine many of the Appalachian choose traditional medicine because they lack trust toward physicians that are not their relative or members of their communities.

The Appalachian traditional medicine is defended from platform of observation, pride, tradition access, and ignorance although some of the traditional remedies work and may have led to the manufacture of modern drugs. In most cases, the medicine is practiced due to various reasons such as the need to follow tradition with believes that if traditions are not followed things will be worse. Others use this medicine due to pride; while others use due to lack of trust in people they do not know. For others, it is due to economics and accessibility. I would not encourage the use of such remedy especially when one is also taking the modern medicine since this can result to serious complications.

To ensure that Mrs. Kapp adheres to the prescribed medication, I would recommend that the family return her to the health care facilities so that I can evaluate and measure whether they have adhered. This can be achieved by tool such as self-report, pill counting, and/ or, by measuring serum, or urine (Cheraghi, Manookian & Nasrabadi, 2014, p.920). Self-reporting is by far the best method of measuring the reliability. It involves asking questions such as did u forget to take medication?

References

Cheraghi, M. A., Manookian, A., & Nasrabadi, A. N. (2014). Human dignity in religion-embedded cross-cultural nursing. Nursing Ethics, 21(8), 916-928.

Easterby, L. M., Siebert, B., Woodfield, C. J., Holloway, K., Gilbert, P., Zoucha, R., & Turk, M. W. (2012). A Transcultural Immersion Experience: Implications for Nursing Education. ABNF Journal, 23(4), 81-84.

Halter, M., Grund, F., Fridline, M., See, S., Young, L., & Reece, C. (2015). Transcultural Self-Efficacy Perceptions of Baccalaureate Nursing Students. Journal Of Transcultural Nursing, 26(3), 327-335.