Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is a groundbreaking book about cross-cultural communication in health care. The book is about Lia Lee, who was the first in her Hmong family to be born in the United States. Her parents spoke no En Continue Reading...
The family would certainly have been more comfortable if the hospital made more of an effort to understand their culture and beliefs. The Lees were treated as if they were indignant and unresponsive to the needs of their child which was not the cas Continue Reading...
Within this clash of cultures, the Lee family did not know how to cope with the medical system in place to help Lia and her epilepsy. When they refused to give her the medications, Lia was removed from the home and placed in foster care. When the f Continue Reading...
Yet the nightmare continued, because the communication problems were not resolved. During the next four years, her anticonvulsant medicines were changed about 25 times, which would have been hell for any family. The Lees questioned the value of so Continue Reading...
They cannot ignore the socioeconomic issues of adversity so often present and, where necessary, need to act as advocates, mediators and social brokers (Compton, Galaway, & Curnoyer, 2005). The concern is that the issue of healthcare for cultura Continue Reading...
Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a book by Anne Fadiman about cross-cultural communications, or lack thereof, in the American health care system. The book is about a child named Lia Lee. Lia Lee was the first in her family to be born in the U Continue Reading...
Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down I believe Anne Fadiman was trying to prove that it is possible to work through tough cultural barriers by showing the mistakes of Lia Lee's doctors. By showing these examples, and also giving examples of how cul Continue Reading...
spirit catches you and you fall down. Notions of epilepsy amongst the Hmong nation are diametrically different to those of the West. The Hmong believe that epileptic individuals are particularly fancied by malevolent spirits (called 'dabs') that e Continue Reading...
To a culture that didn't use calendars, giving a certain medicine at a certain hour of the day was incomprehensible. Neil and Peggy didn't consider that a somewhat less effective, but easier-to-follow drug regimen may have been better given the stat Continue Reading...
Medical training is all about treating patients who understand, there is little training for the patients who are not "normal," and so the medical community is ill prepared to deal with other cultures. The American doctors were saddened by Lia's con Continue Reading...
Spirit Catches You and You Fall There were a number of different delivery systems models in place and which attempted to effect positive care for Lia Lee and her family in Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. One can successfull Continue Reading...
Spirit Faidman, Anne. (1998) The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The title of Anne Fadiman's book on the implications of multiculturalism in modern nursing sounds more like a religious testimony than a tex Continue Reading...
2008). Developing cultural competency -- the ability to understand or even achieve the point-of-view of a different culture -- is an essential skill for doctors, and even more so as globalization continues to bring people of disparate backgrounds an Continue Reading...
We know that we do not know everything in the West. However, many aspects of the Hmong are also just coming out of the Middle Ages and there is only so much that can be tolerated and there must be a demand for a middle ground in the way that western Continue Reading...
e. according to American norms and conventions. Part of this, incidentally, was due too to the fault of government itself that failed to provide them with the land, which the Hmong could have fertilized. I realized that even thoguh America has gone Continue Reading...
Culture and Counseling In her book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, author Anne Fadiman recounts the life and death of a little Hmong girl living in Merced, California. Lia Lee had what Western doctors call epilepsy, and which the Hmong hav Continue Reading...
Cultural and National Identity In the midst of globalization, cultures are coming together unlike ever before. As a result, refugees and immigrants are faced with challenging circumstances that threaten to weaken their national or cultural identity Continue Reading...
old Chinese proverb that I believe encompasses my feelings for the nursing profession. With the healthcare industry in its current state of disruption, it has become very important to re-evaluate the relationship of patient care and patient satisfac Continue Reading...
When the Hmong refugees encounter the peculiarities of the Western medical system, their entire worldview is called into question. Yet it is mainly the Americans who struggle. The Hmong view of health, healing, and wellness differ so sharply from th Continue Reading...
In the world of medicine today, there is still much about the inner workings of the human brain that are relatively unknown. Yet advancements in brain scanning and other techniques are giving researchers greater insight on how epilepsy works and wh Continue Reading...
Cultural Awareness Americans have traditionally celebrated the diversity of cultures that comprises the United States. Despite some reservations, much of the country still believes that the amalgamation of different ethnicities contributes to the ri Continue Reading...
CULTURAL ISSUES in four texts Cultural issues usually surface in a multicultural society like that of America's because co-existence of people from various different ethnic backgrounds can lead to undesired and unexpected conflicts. But these issues Continue Reading...
arrival of Hmong to the United States and delves briefly on the earlier conditions of the Hmong in Laos and Southeast Asia, their region of origin. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Continue Reading...
Defend or reject: Buchanan and Brock would rightly defend the decision of the court to remove Lia Lee from the custody of her parents and place her in a foster home Deciding for others: competency This essay involves defending or rejecting the stat Continue Reading...
Both healers could learn how to incorporate techniques that may be different from their respective cultures into how they treat medical conditions. Ultimately Lia was put into foster care because the doctor believed that the parents were not caring Continue Reading...
Question Reading the Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down was a pivotal moment in my life, completely shifting my perspective about health care and the duties of doctors and nurses. As a minority student I am familiar with different types of discr Continue Reading...
diverse population nurses must attend to, the concept of 'transcultural' nursing is important to understand. Instead of viewing health as a universal concept, transcultural nursing attempts to understand the conceptual building blocks of the nursing Continue Reading...
Health belief model During the 1950's, the Health Belief model (HBM) was developed from the field of social psychology. The theoretical framework offers an explanation of why individuals are motivated to participate in preventive health behaviors. Continue Reading...
A dominant healthcare practice for many Mexican-Americans is the hot and cold theory of food selection, where illness or trauma may require adjustments in the hot and cold balance of foods to restore body equilibrium. In lower socioeconomic groups i Continue Reading...
According to Illich (1968), hypocrisy is, perhaps, an instinctive trait shared by majority of Americans. They are mentally prepared to accept that the motives of potentially legitimizing the 1963 international volunteer action are not applicable when Continue Reading...
Counseling Immigrants and Refugees - Bring the World to your Backyard Immigrants add depth to the American cultural landscape, and enhance the character of our already colorful communities. This is true in microcosms, such as school campuses. It is Continue Reading...
Lia Lee could not be seen alone, as the doctors saw her. Their obligation was not only to her, but to her whole family. Lia Lee's brother aptly writes: I do recall everything from the door slamming incident to the day the doctors told my family tha Continue Reading...
in "Piaf," Pam Gems provides a view into the life of the great French singer and arguably the greatest singer of her generation -- Edith Piaf. (Fildier and Primack, 1981), the slices that the playwright provides, more than adequately trace Continue Reading...
2.0 Strategic Situation Analysis In order to understand the nature of aircraft manufacture at Boeing, it is important to have a clear vision of how outsourcing plays into the manufacture of aircraft. Let us use the example of Boeing's Dreamliner. Continue Reading...
Socrates and Plotinus also have very similar ideas on how Beauty is recognized, which though intimately related to their ideas on the nature of Beauty are somewhat different, also. For both men, Beauty was connected to the eternal. Socrates, being Continue Reading...
Faith and Reason Irreconcilable Irreconcilable Faith and Reason The challenge of reconciling reason to faith has been one that has dominated philosophy since thinking and oration became known as philosophy. The challenge is to address the idea that Continue Reading...
SWEAT: a Case for Self-Defense Literature plays many roles in our lives; it entertains us, frightens us, and thrills us, but if written well it also teaches us and gives us a greater understanding of ourselves and human nature as a whole. When an au Continue Reading...
This poem is a favorite of mine because it reminds me to slow down and appreciate everything. It does not take long nor does it take much to renew and revive and that is exactly what the poet wishes to communicate. In Joy Harjo's "Remember," the p Continue Reading...
I thought of the millions of people living their lives and looking at watches and clocks. I could not help thinking that one day my life would end and I began to think about those people who had passed on form this life. A picked up the watch and p Continue Reading...
It seems to her, says Flaubert, that her being, rising toward God, is going to be annihilated in love like burning incense that dissipates in vapor. But her response during this phenomenon remains curiously erotic... The waving of the green palm lea Continue Reading...
