Cultural Fault Lines in Healthcare: Reflections on Cultural Competency - Couverture souple

Brannigan, Michael C.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0739149679 ISBN 13 : 9780739149676

Editeur : Lexington Books, 2011

Synopsis

Healthcare in the U.S. faces two interpenetrating certainties. First, with over 66 racial and ethnic groupings, our “American Mosaic” of worldviews and values unavoidably generates clashes in hospitals and clinics. Second, our public increasingly mistrusts our healthcare system and delivery. One certainty fuels the other. Conflicts in the clinical encounter, particularly with patients from other cultures, often challenge dominant assumptions of morally appropriate principles and behavior. In turn, lack of understanding, misinterpretation, stereotyping, and outright discrimination result in poor health outcomes, compounding further mistrust. To address these cultural fault lines, healthcare institutions have initiated efforts to ensure “cultural competence.” Yet, these efforts become institutional window-dressing without tackling deeper issues, issues having to do with attitudes, understanding, and, most importantly, ways we communicate with patients. These deeper issues reflect a fundamental, original fault line: the ever-widening gap between serving our own interests while disregarding the concerns of more vulnerable patients, those on the margins, those Others who remain disenfranchised because they are Other. This book examines this and how we must become the voice for these Others whose vulnerability and suffering are palpable. The author argues that, as a vital and necessary condition for cultural competency, we must learn to cultivate the virtue of Presence - of genuinely being there with our patients. Cultural competency is less a matter of acquiring knowledge of other cultures. Cultural competency demands as a prerequisite for all patients, not just for those who seem different, genuine embodied Presence. Genuine, interpersonal, embodied presence is especially crucial in our screen-centric and Facebook world where interaction is mediated through technologies rather than through authent

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Michael C. Brannigan is Dean of Spiritual Life and the George and Jane Pfaff Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral Values at the College of Saint Rose.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Lexington Books
• Date d'édition: 2011
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0739149679
• ISBN 13: 9780739149676
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 118
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Allemagne