Effect Of Cultural Values on Patient's Health

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Explain Sin to Sickness

It is a cultural belief in society that the deeds of individuals will affect their lifestyle in the future. Therefore, it is their belief that good deeds will lead to a healthy and prosperous life whereas, bad deeds and cursing other people will result in bad consequences in the future and affect an individual healthy lifestyle and make them fall sick or they may face difficulties such as serious health conditions or multiple medical disorders (Taylor, 2015).

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Lay Beliefs

Lay concepts of health and illness are a kind of conceptual theory used by individuals, communities, or cultures in activity to maintain health. This concept of health and illness has theories of illness like humoral, Ayurvedic, and biomedical but also involve belief about the body in health and illness. It views ideas about the way the body functions and symptoms appear on special significance. Like in Ayurvedic medicine, chest pain is considered concern as a symptom of emotional upset not as a breakdown of body function. This concept of treatment differs widely among different cultural groups and also between different socio-economic status people. In terms of lay belief concept, the treatments may differ from doctors' concepts (Bieliauskas, 2019). Lay concept about illness may differ from different countries but in India, the cause is related to individuals' improper diet, to the natural world as in climate changes, supernatural world. When many people have conceptual models about the origin of symptoms it can termed as folk illness. From this lay belief on health and illness, emotional distress may arise. The lay believers shape the way people think in social and cultural significance. The risk factor arises due to the beliefs in major theories about illness locally.

Bio-Medicine

It is a branch of medical science that implements physiological and biological principles in clinical practice. Biomedicine is basically applied to physiology as well as biology. It is a new approach to medicine based on a set of ideas about health. Earlier, society considered religious ideas, and their life used to revolve around the church. They do not believe in scientific facts and practicals instead they use to think that knowledge about health can be gained from priests or god agents on earth. After that, they started to move forward in life and moved towards the development of modern medical ideas (Crawford and et. al., 2015). Because of biomedicine, health professionals started to form their own organisation and medical standards. With the extent of biomedicine, individuals who used to believe in traditional methods of treating illness at home and places set aside are now indulged in scientific facts and involvement of medication. In a community, health care is considered as a relationship between a medical expert who is responsible for delivering quality care to patients and implementation professional skills and a patient who is responsible for monitoring his own health and reporting problems if occurred. The biomedical model is used to treat body as a machine.

Socio Organisation Of Health

The framework of social relations within a particular group mostly the relation between its subgroups and institutions is known as socio organisation. The social organisation of Health is an organisation that provides health services to individuals and delivers quality care to patients. National Health Service is a socio organisation that is a government-funded system to provides health and medical care services to individuals in the UK. This includes care practitioners, healthcare professionals, nurses and midwifery. They provide all necessary services such as ambulance facilities or caretaking services when needed by individuals (Falconer, Randall, and Bodenmann, 2016).

Discuss Main Theories

Functionalism Approach In Context To Health

The functionalist approach lays emphasis of the working of society and focuses that for the efficient and effective operation of society, good health and improved medical care play an essential role. The responsibilities towards society can not be fulfilled by an individual if they are ill. The stability and functioning of society get disturbed when numerous people are unfit and are unable to work. Thus, balanced health and better medical care are required for stabilization of society.

As per this approach, for an individual to be regarded as legitimately sick, they have to meet various conditions and expectations. Firstly, the person who is ill should not be sensed to cause the disease on their own. Secondly, the ill person should have the will to get well. If they act as being ill or sick, then they are considered as legitimately ill. Thirdly, the illness should be officially confirmed by a skilled professional or physician and the individual has to follow the orders and instructions so as to get well (Pilgrim, 2019). If all the factors are fulfilled then the person is regarded as sick. The professionals or physicians should monitor, treat, and diagnose the individual correctly and should prescribe the appropriate medicines so that the individual can become healthy as soon as possible and can become an asset to society.

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Conflict Theory In Relation To Health

Conflict theory states that conflicts arise when status and power are unequally distributed between groups in organisation. This theory focuses on the conflict between groups over resources. There are some institutions like government, education, religion that indicate the competition and help to maintain the structure. It focuses on two primary classes and each class has its own interest. This theory is stated by Karl Marx who stated that the socio-economic conditions are worse in between the working class and the poor and conflicts develop between them. The conflict theory arises in the context of health because health refers to the level of a person's physical, mental, and social well-being.

According to this approach, these three levels affect each other in health as everyone needs proper physical and mental health care but due to conflict between groups, not everyone gains proper physical health and mental care (Purnell and Fenkl, 2019). There are medicines provided by many institutes that seek to prevent, diagnose, treat illness, and promote health but some are inadequate to receive proper health care and become ill. These people are from socially underprivileged backgrounds. The impact of conflict theory is the inequality in the quality of health care services to the different groups. This inequality brings deficient health care and difficult for individuals for their well-being. Each group attempts to attain more resources from another group of classes and conflict arises between them. The impact of conflict theory is negative on all groups of classes, especially on poor classes.

Symbolic Interactionism Approach With Respect To Health

The symbolic interactionism approach considers that illness and health are social structures. According to this theory, an individual is regarded as unhealthy or ill only by the consideration factors of the society and their members. This approach laid importance of the suitable interaction and healthy conversations between the health care provider and patients. The doctors or physicians are the ones who manage the situation according to their acquired authority and their up-to-date knowledge of medicines.

It has been seen that the patients usually have to sit and wait for the doctors to come up and diagnose them. They are often observed to wear white lab coats for the purpose of safety which helps in limiting the transmission of harmful microorganisms from one place to another. The patients are commonly called by their name so as to make them comfortable and by this, they can eventually describe and outline the signs and symptoms of the illness (Shen, 2015). Such conversations assist the doctors in prescribing suitable medications and tests to make them healthy and fit again. As per this theory, doctors, especially gynaecologists should not form any personal interest in female patients and a proper distance should be maintained while examining the genital area of women. Such social and cultural construction determines the health and illness of an individual according to this theory.

CONCLUSION

From the above report, various conclusions can be obtained that cultures play a very crucial role in the health and illness of an individual. The emphasis has been given more to natural or Ayurvedic remedies for treating sickness. The bio-medical aspect focuses on the physiological and psychological features of health. Various theories have been described to form a relationship between social and cultural determinants of health and illness. These theories primarily focus on the importance of society in the prevention and improvement of health.

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