Transcultural Analysis Of Hispanic Culture And End Of Life Issues

Transcultural Analysis of Hispanic Culture and End of Life Issues It is of the utmost importance that the nurse is the patient’s advocate for exceptional care. Part of being a patient’s advocate is understanding what is familiar to them at home and seeing what you can do to recreate that as best as possible. It’s important to be flexible and understanding when it comes to different cultural practices and try to accommodate the patient as much as possible.
Giger and Davidhizar Transcultural Assessment Model In 1988 the Giger and Davidhizar Transcultural Assessment Model was developed. This transcultural model assists nursing students in caring for culturally diverse patients. This model explores six cultural phenomena; communication, space,

Certain time concepts might be more important than the others to different cultures and it is important to recognize those differences.
If a culture places importance on the present, they might have a hard time complying with health regimens. For example, a present minded person might think why do something today when tomorrow might not ever happen. In this case it is always important to take extra time to communicate the importance of understanding how to control their disease or illness to prevent future complications.
Environmental Control Environment control deals with how a culture comes to understand how they became sick or what they can do to treat their disease. Depending on the culture they can either believe that they have an environmental control over their illness (American Mindset) and that they can cure themselves by going to the doctor and getting the right treatment. Or other cultures might believe they don’t have any control over their disease and that it’s out of their hands (Crist, 2005). An example would be a patient saying, “God is in control, so all I can do it pray.”
Biological

This is because they feel that if the patient deduces they have a terminal illness that they will lose their will to live and death will come faster (Galanti, 2002). Hispanics also feel that they have less environmental control over their health. More of an external control view is common with Hispanic’s as they often believe that God controls everything. Believing they get an illness because of bad luck or as a punishment from God (Crist, 2005).
Biological Variations in the Hispanic Culture Statistics show Hispanics have more deaths caused by diabetes and chronic liver disease than whites in America. Furthermore, Hispanics are also more likely to have uncontrolled high blood pressure, obesity, and are 28% less likely to get a colorectal screening (Vital Signs, 2015). Hispanic men tend to work more labor-intensive jobs and often feel it’s not important to check up on their health. Working with Hispanic communities to promote wellness checks will help prevent disease as well as death (Vital Signs,