In society today, it is crucial for an individual, in the healthcare field, to be aware of other cultures and religions. With this said, it is important to practice cultural awareness and to practice a professional culture understanding. As future nurses, a key component of nursing education is to seek more knowledge about the patient’s culture to better help in caring for our patients. Anne Fadiman’s book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, allows the audience to relive the Lee’s story. They were a Hmong refugee family that sought treatment from the health care system in Merced, California. Furthermore, the Lees endured the treatment of their daughter’s seizures. In this book, Fadiman goes into detail about the cultural clashes between
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An ethical dilemma is considered a circumstance that requires someone two equally unfavorable situations. Unfortunately the ethical dilemma does not solve the initial problem, but nurses and other health care providers must assess and clarify the ethical dilemma and gather data. Once the dilemma has been identified, healthcare providers can identify options and make decisions to act (Black, 2017). In the Lee’s case, these strategies were not put into place soon enough. Step one in the ethical decision making model is identifing the problem and factors maintaining the problem. On Lia’s first visit to MCMC, there were no translators, so there was no way the Lee family can tell the resident that Lia just had a seizure. The resident just noticed a cough and a congested chest which lead to an x-ray taken, this lead to the diagnosis of “early bronchopneumonia”. Due to the language barrier, the resident wouldn't have known that the congestion was due to her seizure and ultimately the first misdiagnosis of Lia’s …show more content…
Now, this is where the Hmong culture and western medicine collide. “ Dan had no way of knowing that Foua and Nao Kao had already diagnosed their daughters’ problem as the illness where the spirit catches you and fall down. Foua and Nao Kao had no way of knowing that Dan had diagnosed it as epilepsy, the most common of all neurological disorders. Each had accurately noted the same symptoms, but Dan would have been surprised to hear that they were caused by loss soul, and Lia’s parents would have been surprised to hear they were caused by an electrochemical storm inside their daughter's’ head that been stirred up by the misfiring of the aberrant brain cells” (Fadiman,
An ethical dilemma is considered a circumstance that requires someone two equally unfavorable situations. Unfortunately the ethical dilemma does not solve the initial problem, but nurses and other health care providers must assess and clarify the ethical dilemma and gather data. Once the dilemma has been identified, healthcare providers can identify options and make decisions to act (Black, 2017). In the Lee’s case, these strategies were not put into place soon enough. Step one in the ethical decision making model is identifing the problem and factors maintaining the problem. On Lia’s first visit to MCMC, there were no translators, so there was no way the Lee family can tell the resident that Lia just had a seizure. The resident just noticed a cough and a congested chest which lead to an x-ray taken, this lead to the diagnosis of “early bronchopneumonia”. Due to the language barrier, the resident wouldn't have known that the congestion was due to her seizure and ultimately the first misdiagnosis of Lia’s …show more content…
Now, this is where the Hmong culture and western medicine collide. “ Dan had no way of knowing that Foua and Nao Kao had already diagnosed their daughters’ problem as the illness where the spirit catches you and fall down. Foua and Nao Kao had no way of knowing that Dan had diagnosed it as epilepsy, the most common of all neurological disorders. Each had accurately noted the same symptoms, but Dan would have been surprised to hear that they were caused by loss soul, and Lia’s parents would have been surprised to hear they were caused by an electrochemical storm inside their daughter's’ head that been stirred up by the misfiring of the aberrant brain cells” (Fadiman,