How Health and Illness Beliefs Influence Assessment Process
The assessment process is a crucial part of creating fully detailed information about every patient. However, during the process, severe errors can arise due to a lack of cultural competence. If a practitioner during the process fails to inquire about the patients herbal or traditional remedies, he/she may end up prescribing or giving medication that has adverse interactions. Illness and health beliefs have substantial impacts on the assessment process. Community beliefs have a significant impact on people’s wellbeing and health. Conventional health beliefs among the communities can relate to daily activities, food habits, and lifestyle and so on. Such beliefs can have harmless or harmful impacts on health. There is diverse cultural variation in diagnosis, labelling and treating some diseases and symptoms. Community or individual belief can either heal or elevate illness.
Health and illness beliefs influence interpersonal communication between the patient and the health practitioner during the assessment process. Patient and health practitioner interpersonal communication incorporates orientation, laying out a plan, intervention, goals, implementation and evaluation. Such communication incorporates the exchanging of beliefs and cultural ideas, thus enabling the health practitioner to understand the needs and cultural background of their clients. Different cultures do believe a cure is only complete when it heals the mind, body and spirit.
During the assessment process, the patient may refer the practitioner to a lay healer he/she may not be familiar with. The health practitioner thus needs to seek clarification with practice he/she is not conversant with s as to tailor the goals and treatment based on the patient’s requirement and not to impact their cultural perspectives. The health provider should be careful not to ask such questions in a judgmental manner. If healthcare practitioners fail to recognize their role as providers, they may deter their ability to consider patients ideas and viewpoints in the treatment process leading to poor outcomes.
Health and illness beliefs also impact the assessment process as different individuals often utilize more than one means to solve the problems. Conventionally the causes of disease are viewed in three broad categories; from magic religious or holistic, from naturalistic and from scientific or biomedical. These beliefs affect the assessment process. An individual may be seeking scientific or biomedical treatment and indulging simultaneously in spiritual or naturalistic processes.
In addition to seeking biomedical treatment, Hispanics may depend on partera (lay wife), herbalist (yerboba) and spiritualist (espiritualista) (Citation). Such beliefs require the health practitioners to consider the patient’s view and allow them to look for different ways of seeking treatment or relief until its less harmful. Health and illness beliefs shape how much the patient feels the care and education are culturally relevant and shapes the extend he/she will perceive and respond to it during the assessment process.
During the patient assessment process, the health and illness belief structures have substantial impacts on the way the patient responds to the assessment questions. Every ethnic group has their own unique beliefs and perspectives they bring to healthcare systems. While serving in a cross-cultural setting, healthcare practitioners must be aware of various key cultural beliefs. During the assessment, there are a couple of things the patients may not like to be asked. These anticipations and misunderstandings can create differences between health providers and patients from diverse cultures. For instance, different cultures have a different belief about pain.
Health practitioners expect variations in pain tolerance and perception as well as anticipating differences in pain expression. Some of the patients may readily complain or answer assessment question of pain while others may opt to be stock and try to hide the pain. The individuals opting to remain stoic are influenced by their social environment, such as the family that transfers the cultural beliefs and norms to the children. Such individuals may not be willing to expound more on their pain during assessment. If healthcare providers are not well conversant with their patients, the patient assessment process is less effective.
Culture has substantial impacts on physical findings during the assessment process. Various cultures have their unique and acceptable sickness conditions, known symptoms of illness, famous or preferred healers and treatment. Some of the patients seek biomedical care from healthcare providers and simultaneously seek medication from religious healers. Some patients from different cultures often prefer various healthcare like spirituality than seeing a physician or taking drugs. For instance, American Indians may get assistance from medicine, woman or man or shaman, while the Blacks may seek assistance from spiritualist, and houngan. If health practitioners do not have specific and detailed knowledge about these traditional health practices, they may not engage the patients adequately to obtain physical findings.
In conclusion, health and illness beliefs have substantial impacts on the assessment process as it impacts the patient-practitioner interpersonal communication as well as impacting the various means the individuals utilize to solve the problems. Belief structure makes some individuals conceal or hide some things or illness and thus impacting how they respond to the assessment question. Culture impacts physical findings as it shapes the acceptable symptoms of illness, preferred treatment and healers and sickness conditions.
