It is common for patients to feel detached from their medical care providers. Properly implemented communication, understanding, and trust are vital for any successful patient encounter. Differences in education, expression, beliefs, and culture in the setting of diagnoses made and treatments rendered can be stumbling blocks in these exchanges. The ineffective communication between patients and providers exemplified in The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, and the frustration that follows, impact the providers’ ability to administer sufficient care. Increased provider education on international culture could have been implemented to avoid these problems in communication and care. Culturally determined health disparity has been increasingly
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While Fadiman reflectively observes the mistakes, misunderstandings, and misdiagnoses made in the subsequent chapters, the omnipotent reader can foolishly believe that such mistakes are easily avoided and can be attributed to the closed-minded medicine of days-gone-by. It is, instead, the perseverance of issues of communication across the exam table that stand as a topic of much debate, frequent research, and frustration. It is not only the clashing of cultures, but that of classes, sexes, and beliefs that often separate the medical provider from their patients. Breakdowns in communication can manifest themselves in poor outcomes, but more often manifest as the classic patient complaint, “I was more confused when I left the exam room, than when I walked in.” In ‘A Strategy to Reduce Cross-cultural Miscommunication and Increase the Likelihood of Improving Health Outcomes’, Kagawa-Singer and Kassim-Lakha write that, “Culture is fundamental to the development and management of disease in every population, for its purpose is to teach its members what to do to survive, how to do it, and why they should persevere in the face of adversity. As such, physicians would benefit themselves as well as their patients by learning how to be cross-culturally effective in the delivery of medical care.” A question arises of where to implement intervention for these intercultural communication
While Fadiman reflectively observes the mistakes, misunderstandings, and misdiagnoses made in the subsequent chapters, the omnipotent reader can foolishly believe that such mistakes are easily avoided and can be attributed to the closed-minded medicine of days-gone-by. It is, instead, the perseverance of issues of communication across the exam table that stand as a topic of much debate, frequent research, and frustration. It is not only the clashing of cultures, but that of classes, sexes, and beliefs that often separate the medical provider from their patients. Breakdowns in communication can manifest themselves in poor outcomes, but more often manifest as the classic patient complaint, “I was more confused when I left the exam room, than when I walked in.” In ‘A Strategy to Reduce Cross-cultural Miscommunication and Increase the Likelihood of Improving Health Outcomes’, Kagawa-Singer and Kassim-Lakha write that, “Culture is fundamental to the development and management of disease in every population, for its purpose is to teach its members what to do to survive, how to do it, and why they should persevere in the face of adversity. As such, physicians would benefit themselves as well as their patients by learning how to be cross-culturally effective in the delivery of medical care.” A question arises of where to implement intervention for these intercultural communication