The Impact of Cultural Competence on Patient Treatment

This article explores the impact of cultural competence on patient treatment. It highlights the importance of considering cultural beliefs for better healthcare outcomes. Medical anthropology and ethnography are discussed in relation to cultural competency in healthcare.

Name
ANTH 227
CROSS CULTURAL VIEW OF HEALTH
Date
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/how-cultural-background-impacts-health/
The above news article showed the effect of cultural awareness over health. The
clinicians who are unaware of the cultural complications or are not cultural competent
enough they tend to lose major clinical implications for a particular patient. Culture also
affects the patient communication and medication (Allen et al 2014:2). Cultural competence
helps the doctors and other healthcare workers to know the patient background that helps to
identify the unique characters of the patients. Cultural factors are vital to the diagnosis, care
and treatment of the patient. Culture is often made analogous with ethnicity. Thus, it is very
desirable for the clinicians to be sensitive towards the culture differences and also to be able
to provide care that deals the various issues from an anthropological perspective (Renzaho et
al 2014: 3). The branch of anthropology that deals with core methodology is ‘Ethnography’.
It refers to the description of life from the view point of an anthropologist. Ethnography is
very different from cultural competence. It emphasizes the engagement of other people with
the practices that are prevalent in a specific community. It emphasizes ambivalence which
means that many individuals feel as if they are existing between two different worlds which
was not included in cultural competence. Thus, anthropologists and healthcare professionals
share the primacy of experience. Both of them put emphasis on the experience that the patient
went through during illness and try to visualize the illness as the patient visualizes,
understands, perceives and responds to it (Argintaru et al 2013: 1).
The above topic is chosen as it correctly describes the relation between the cultural
competency and patient treatment. Medical anthropology involves culture, language,
environmental differences and health beliefs. This leads to better patient outcome as it takes
into account the interpersonal relations as well as communication skills. This highlights the
importance of cultural competence into the healthcare sector (Chaze et al 2015: 3). In

medical anthropology the practices and ideas about the health and illness are studied along
with the social and cultural conditions that either lead to the illness or are related to the
causes of the illness. The themes of the medical anthropology related to the chosen topic is
the socio-logics involved with the illness of the patient. The chosen topic identifies that how
the causes of illness is intricately related to the cultural diversity faced by the patient. The
clinicians should take into account the health beliefs and ideologies (Rehzano et al 2013: 3).
Thus, it is very important to consider the cultural beliefs of the patients in order to provide
them better health that will results in quality care and positive patient outcome.

References
Allen, J. D., Leyva, B., Torres, A. I., Ospino, H., Tom, L., Rustan, S., & Bartholomew, A.
2014 Journal of health care for the poor and underserved 25(2), 503–526.
Renzaho, A. M. N., Romios, P., Crock, C., & Sønderlund, A. L.
2013 International Journal for Quality in Health Care 25(3), 261269.
Chaze, F., Thomson, M. S., George, U., & Guruge, S.
2015 Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health 34(3), 87-101.
Argintaru, N., Chambers, C., Gogosis, E., Farrell, S., Palepu, A., Klodawsky, F., & Hwang, S. W.
2013 BMC Public Health 13(1), 577.