HERITAGE ASSESSMENT TOOLS

Heritage Assessment Tools

Heritage Assessment Tools

Introduction

What is cultural or heritage competence? What is culturally or hereditary competent care? These are some of the most crucial issues for consideration in today's healthcare world. Medical practitioners and executives are exposed to different cultures and heritages in patient care today. Whilst it is important for doctors and nurses to be able to provide proper care for the society, it is equally important that the practices they adapt reflect respect for the patient's cultural background and heritage. Cultural and hereditary competence in healthcare implies cultural mix and hereditary mix of congruent behaviors, practice relationships, structures and policies that allow nurses to work effectively in a cross-cultural situation. Hereditary and Cultural competence reflects a higher level of knowledge than hereditary and cultural sensitivity, which once appeared to be the only requisite for medical practitioners to care for their patients effectively.

Competent care with regard to culture and heritage should be the basis for all the care that healthcare executives provide, especially when caring for a patient whose cultural background differs from that of the physician. Competent care is designed for a patient, based on the uniqueness of his or her heritage, including cultural norms and values. This assistance should include strategies to empower patients in making decisions related to his or her health behavior (Davila, 2007). People have their own culture and needs to be treated as unique individuals. Therefore, the heritage assessment tool offers a very handy solution for studying and analyzing the overall needs of an individual, taking into account the various aspects that constitute his cultural background and define his identity. This paper aims at discussing the importance of the Heritage assessment tool and its effectiveness health promotion (UoMHS, 2007).

Discussion

Heritage Assessment Tools

The Heritage Assessment Tools offer a simple assessment umbrella that usually spans over the hereditary environment of the family, for analyzing and examining the cultural background and heritage of an individual. These assessment tools work on the concept that healthcare practitioners need to provide culturally appropriate care; and, therefore, must try to understand the culture and heritage of the patient. Today, several models of heritage assessment tools exist. Moreover, the basic tool emphasizes on questionnaire that will allow us to gather relevant hereditary data of the respondents. The heritage assessment tools encompasses on various hereditary phenomena that need to be kept in mind to provide culturally appropriate care to the patients considering their individual heritage and background.



Importance of the Heritage Assessment Tools

Heritage assessment tools provide a framework through which lists of questions or areas of assessment are provided for different phenomenon. Even when a detailed cultural assessment is not completed, it is important for the medical practitioners to keep in mind the categories of assessment and areas that would appear to have special significance for the patient and family. It is helpful for the health care agency to have copies of books that provide information on cultural groups (Harris and Custer, ...