Cross Cultural Communication Analysis

The spirit catches you and you fall down story reveals devastating consequences of a lack of cross-cultural communication and how cultural beliefs sometimes influence the effectiveness of western medicine on patients embedded in strong cultural beliefs. Patients’ mental state plays a major role in their response to treatment and care. Health care providers’ ability to connect with the diverse cultural beliefs of the patients they serve through effective communication therefore, can help patients to wholeheartedly blend their cultural beliefs with the medical treatment they receive. First hand knowledge about how a patient think, and what he or she believes in plays a role in medical treatment. For health care providers to be effective in providing quality care for patients from different background, they must develop a good inter cultural and cross cultural communication skills. Understanding the way of life, the types of beliefs, the meanings of certain symbols and how people from different cultures perceive the …show more content…
The Lee’s family suffered a ton of needless pains and frustrations due to a lack of effective cross culture communication. If the medical staff at the MCMC had taken time to understand the beliefs and cultural differences among the Hmong, they could have been able to help Lia recover from her condition without Lia and her family going through all those stress. If the medical staff understood the depth of the spiritual aspect of healing among the Hmong, they could have couraged them with proper interpretation to blend both their cultural belief with western medicine. The medical staff were not effective in both their verbal and non verbal communication skills towards the Lees family and that made them unsuccessful in curring Lia’s