Culture and Health Flashcards
Medical anthropology
How people in different cultures and social groups explain the causes of ill health, the types of treatments they believe in, and to whom they turn if they get ill.
Values
Guiding principles for behaviour.
Culture
A system of shared ideas, attitudes, and practices that defines the social system of its members.
Attitudes
Ways of viewing the world that arise out of experience and access to information.
Beliefs
Systems of understanding which may be religious and otherwise, which provide guiding principles that help people make sense of the world.
Social norms
Rules or standards that guide or constrain individuals actions or behaviours.
Social construction
Refers to the socially crates characteristics of human life based on the idea that people actively construct reality, meaning it is neither ‘natural’ nor inevitable. Therefore notions of normality/abnormality, right/wrong, and health/illness are subjective human creations that should not be taken for granted.
Race
Idea that humans can be divided into biologically distinct sub-groups, identified through phenotype, or outward appearance. It is a social construct. Often implies superiority or inferiority.
Ethnicity
Membership in a group based on shared background, a sense of belonging, self-identity and the recognition by others that one is a member.
Ethnocentrism
Viewing others from ones own cultural perspective, with an implied sense of cultural superiority based on an inability to understand or accept the practices and beliefs of other cultures.
Culture-bound syndromes
Locally defined patterns of illness that occur only in specific communities and are identified by a set of symptoms that derives from the culture of the society that experiences them.
Illness behaviour
The socially acceptable way to act when sick.
Cultural awareness
The recognition of differences and commonalities, and understanding one’s own cultural influences. Those differences could be seen in a positive, negative or neutral manner.
Cultural safety
The acknowledgment by health professionals and organisations of the need to provide services in a manner appropriate to all members of a diverse population. Cultural safety is achieve when a client perceives their healthcare was delivered in a manner that respected and maintained their cultural integrity.
Cultural security
When a health organisations and health professionals operate from a position where appropriate responses to cultural diversity are not only acknowledged, but actually embedded in all aspects of health care (e.g. From policy to practice).
