The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (Fadiman, 1997) is a poignant story that revolves around an epileptic Hmong girl living in Merced, named Lia Lee. Fadiman’s book postulates that language barrier was the most obvious problem that caused many issues such as misdiagnosis and failure to adhere to the medicine prescription. However, it is the cultural chasm between Lia’s rationalist American doctors, through biomedical practices, and Hmong animism, through the cultural practices of shamanism that contributed greatly to the obstruction of the girl’s treatment. This story elucidates the stark contrast between biomedical and shamanism practices albeit the tale ending as
Chochinov, 2007 (cited in Cornwell & Goodrich, 2009), states simply that compassion is ‘a deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.’ Pediatric patients and their families are highly sensitive to the compassionate nature of health care professionals and a successful therapeutic relationship with them depends on the sensitive, compassionate care offered by the nurse. This paper will discuss why communication, family centred care and compassion are necessary and important qualities for a nurse to possess when working with pediatric patients and specify some of the challenges a nurse may meet in providing these. Communicating with Babies and Children Nursing children and babies requires a highly skilled and sensitive approach to communication. The developmental age of the pediatric patient needs to be considered when determining the best ways to
Review of “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” The book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman is a compelling look at what can happen when two distinctly different cultures are forced through a variety of circumstances to interact in the best interest of a child. This story is the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and has received a tremendous amount of notoriety. The story chronicles the account of Lia Lee, a Hmong infant diagnosed with epilepsy by western medicine standards, and the clash of how “modern” medicine’s idealistic expectations with its morally ambiguous approaches impact a traditional and culturally intact Hmong approach to little Lia Lee’s wellbeing. Fadiman utilizes a classic anthropological approach in examining the how the Hmong culture and Lia Lee were impacted and what that means for American culture and medicine. Fadiman found that modern western medicine, with all of its virtues, cutting edge treatments and diagnostic capacities, hit a quintessential brick wall when faced with Lia Lee’s family and culture.
High-Risk Family Assessment and Health Promotion Paper Amanda Warbington University of Phoenix Instructor Tracy Kramer High-Risk Family Assessment and Health Promotion Paper Family assessment is an important part of a nursing assessment. Due to the fact that illnesses affect an entire family unit, and not just the patient, it is crucial to determine what effects an illness, like alcoholism, has on a family. High-risk families, like those with alcoholism involved, are definitely in need of nursing interventions. This paper will discuss the disease of alcoholism, its effects on family members, and nursing interventions needed to assist the patient as well as family members. Family Assessment Alcoholism is a disease that affects millions of people around the world.
He believed that separating from Edward was the only thing to save her life. By 1908, the marriage had “deteriorated until nothing of mutual fulfillment or good was left in it” (Kellogg 188). Wharton’s character, Ethan Frome, was unhappy in his marriage almost from the beginning. Soon after they were married, his wife, Zeena, became ill. It appears she was a hypochondriac, attempting to make people believe she was sicker than she was and feel sorry for her.
Diseases were considered the wrath of the gods or the spell of evil people. Thus, in order to be cured, the patient had to believe in the etiology of the disease and the potency of the concoction. The 19th and 20th Centuries ushered in a new perception of the image of nurses and their status in the community. Advances in education, technology, and warfare gave rise to corresponding needs for modern medicine and the training of personnel to use the new medicines to care for the war wounded, feed the sick, and comfort the dying. Hospitals and advanced forms of patient care and treatment gradually replaced the crude methods of diagnosis and dosage-less administration of mainly-liquid potions.
Physician Assisted suicide The phrase “do no harm” is not actually mentioned in the Hippocratic Oath but that dose not mean that the words in the oath are not upheld, the oath goes much deeper to cement the extreme responsibilities of a doctor and to ensure that it is a patient is first a person not a disease. As a doctor should always exorcise every available option to treat a healthy patient there is an ongoing debate on weather the same treatment is carried out on a patient thought to be terminally ill. The debate has stirred up a great deal of emotions and is near and dear to many American hearts. With the issue of Physician Assisted Suicide many points are discussed for and against In the Articles: “Death And The Law: Why Government Has An Interest In Preserving Life” By Lawrence Rudden and Gerard V. Bradley and “Promoting A culture Of Abandonment” By Teresa R Wagner. Physician assisted suicide is something I disagree with because It would violate the trust between a patient and a doctor, It opens the floodgates for other such abuses and generally such requests are made out of fear for the dying process.
José E. Colón Serrano English 3101-2U1 December 04, 2013 In Barbara Huttman’s "A Crime of Compassion”, she develops the conflict undergone by the author, a nurse who performed euthanasia without the approval of her superior. Euthanasia in accordance to “BBC-Ethics” is the termination of life of a very sick person in order to free them from their suffering. In most cases, euthanasia is carried out because the person who is seriously ill asks for it, but there are cases where a person cannot make such request. The author was taken to the Phil Donahue show as if she was taken to court, but in the eyes of the audience she already was guilty of committing a crime. This essay will argue that Huttmann made a wise decision and did not commit a crime.
Bowen believed that the cause of schizophrenia began in an unhealthy attachment of the mother and child relationship. Bowen conducted an experiment by having mothers live on clinic grounds of a National Institute of Mental Health near their schizophrenic children who were hospitalized there. Bowen wanted to identify the unresolved association of mother-child interactions. Bowen stated that this relationship was a disharmonious situation, in which preoccupied parents fail to create a satisfactory parental role that is compatible with their spouse. The parental relationship is strained and there is competition for the children’s affection.
There are many people who become seriously ill and is so sick that they are about to die. Malik had promised the population to prevent this, but Malik could not heal people. He did not have the medicine needed to heal people. Malik meets a female foreign doctor who has no medicine to the sick, but Malik is being tested to the medical assistants because they are helpless, and people get sick everywhere. Malik becomes frustrated because he can’t help the sick in the village.