Understanding the Power of Culture in Healthcare
Culture refers to the set of behaviors, beliefs, art, religion, laws, customs, and traditions that are shared by a group of people. Cultural elements are often learned and inherited through socialization, but can also be acquired through experience.
Observing and appreciating a patient’s cultural values can foster trust, improve treatment adherence, and encourage more positive health outcomes. It can also help a healthcare professional understand patients’ needs more effectively and provide better support.
The power of culture is enormous and is especially strong in the human species, which lives largely outside of nature and relies heavily on its own senses to learn about and navigate the world. It is an intricately complex system of beliefs, ideas, and rules that govern behavior in any given society and that have been shaped by past events, social forces, and the biologic factors that make up the individual human being.
A broader view of culture is that it is the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time and roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.
It is a complex system that cannot be understood by reason alone but only by observing and analyzing the symbolization of the members of a group. In fact, the symbolism of a group is its defining characteristic.
Symbols are the words, gestures, pictures, and objects that represent a particular meaning which only those who share the same culture can recognize. New symbols are easily developed, but old ones disappear.
Rituals are collective activities, usually superfluous in reaching specific goals, but which are regarded as essential by the group. These include ways of greeting and paying respect to others, religious and social ceremonies, and even ritualistic death.
Community is a social unit of any size that shares common values and is generally physical (face-to-face). Communities range from local neighborhoods to national societies to international groups.
Cultural distinctions, such as dress, architecture, and social standards, give a group its identity. Those distinguishing features also define the power and influence of the culture.
The long-term endurance of a cultural pattern can be explained by an attraction-selection-attrition model, which shows that people are drawn to organizations with characteristics similar to their own, and that those who don’t “fit in” tend to leave the group over time. In time, this enduring characteristic is what makes a cultural pattern powerful enough to resist change and outward influences.
Culture refers to the set of behaviors, beliefs, art, religion, laws, customs, and traditions that are shared by a group of people. Cultural elements are often learned and inherited through socialization, but can also be acquired through experience. Observing and appreciating a patient’s cultural values can foster trust, improve treatment adherence, and encourage more positive health outcomes. It can also help a healthcare professional understand patients’ needs more effectively and provide better support. The power of culture is enormous and is especially strong in the human species, which lives largely outside of nature and relies heavily on its own senses to learn about and navigate the world. It is an intricately complex system of beliefs, ideas, and rules that govern behavior in any given society and that have been shaped by past events, social forces, and the biologic factors that make up the individual human being. A broader view of culture is that it is the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time and roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving. It is a complex system that cannot be understood by reason alone but only by observing and analyzing the symbolization of the members of a group. In fact, the symbolism of a group is its defining characteristic. Symbols are the words, gestures, pictures, and objects that represent a particular meaning which only those who share the same culture can recognize. New symbols are easily developed, but old ones disappear. Rituals are collective activities, usually superfluous in reaching specific goals, but which are regarded as essential by the group. These include ways of greeting and paying respect to others, religious and social ceremonies, and even ritualistic death. Community is a social unit of any size that shares common values and is generally physical (face-to-face). Communities range from local neighborhoods to national societies to international groups. Cultural distinctions, such as dress, architecture, and social standards, give a group its identity. Those distinguishing features also define the power and influence of the culture. The long-term endurance of a cultural pattern can be explained by an attraction-selection-attrition model, which shows that people are drawn to organizations with characteristics similar to their own, and that those who don’t “fit in” tend to leave the group over time. In time, this enduring characteristic is what makes a cultural pattern powerful enough to resist change and outward influences.