Culture and Health Beliefs, Essay Example

Introduction

Basically, culture refers to the way people live and interact. It affects and influences the way people think and behave, how they treat their leaders and elders, who is allowed to practice healing or being a healer. Cultures shape how people do in situations where their close associates’ such as parents or children fall ill. Therefore indeed “healthcare has a powerful culture of its own” (Marcia, 2009).

The way a given population of a community define themselves culturally by; ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious inclination, politics etc has a direct influence on what they do for their personal and environment health. This means a successful healthcare giver needs to learn the various cultures of his or her patients, although no summarized culture can fully describe the diversity that exists within individual members of any cultural conglomeration.

Individuals of Asian descent in America, manifest a rather accustomed way of relying on distinct beliefs and health care practices significantly different from those practiced by the Native Americans or other immigrants. There is also significant difference of the same when considering people from East Asia nation’s such as China, Korea and South East Asia countries such as Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam. The Chinese and Vietnamese have been identifying their medicine as Dong Y to separate it from the convectional Western ones. Mostly the Asians are associated with the herbal medicines and acupuncture alternative cures believed to originate from China. The Traditional Vietnamese Medicine (TVM) originated together with the Chinese one and that is why they are often intertwined in to just Chinese medicine. This is further complicated by fact that both of them are deeply entrenched into the traditional religious philosophy of both nations (Marcia, 2009).

In the Vietnamese cultures, the cosmological signs of Yin and Yang aid in representing the concept of healthcare. Harmony is identified by good fortune, good health and thus absence of disease, while disharmony is belied to emanate from presence of disease, bad luck or disaster.

Reference

Marcia, C. (2009). Traditional Asian Health Beliefs and Healing Practices. Retrieved November 17, 2009, from http://www.dimensionsofculture.com/home/traditional_asian_health_beliefs_and_healing_practices