Cultural Barriers To Health Care

Several years ago in Colorado, a Mexican immigrant child was diagnosed with diabetes. The doctor told the mother of the child to use insulin as part of her treatment. After several weeks, the insulin did not appear to be helping the child. Apparently, the child's grandmother had been withholding the insulin shots because she thought they were addictive. She had been using herbal remedies that she had used previously in Mexico. Because of her misconceptions of American medicine and adherence to previous alternative remedies, the child's health was put at risk. This example is one of many where varying cultures create barriers to a person's wellbeing. Although many cultural barriers exist as an impediment to modern remedies of disease, there are ways healthcare workers can overcome these obstacles.
The most common cultural barrier to a person's health is a difference in language between a patient and a healthcare worker.
This is by far the easiest to overcome because it can be [academically] solved; other barriers are dealing with more psychological issues and cannot be solved just by hiring a translator. According to Washington Post, about 25 million people in America have difficulty speaking English because it is not their first language. That is about seven percent of the United States population of over 322 million. This is why many hospitals employ translators or bilingual staff members. However, professional translators can be expensive, costing anywhere from $50 to $100 an hour, so hospitals frequently have alternative solutions for solving linguistic barriers. An "ad hoc interpreter" is a relative or friend of the patient that can somewhat translate for the patient. Ad hoc interpreters are not always reliable and often have biased accounts of events that have occurred, but hospitals use them when information about the patient is absolutely vital and needed for immediate
treatment.
In the aforementioned example dealing with the girl with diabetes from Mexico, the family members failed to give her proper treatment because of a misconception of American medicine. Misconceptions of Western medicine are very common among foreign patients. In some countries, the government tells its people incorrect information about America and its healthcare systems.
Many patients, specifically men of the religion of Islam, refuse to be treated by female nurses and doctors. This is because there are explicit rules in the religious book of the Qur’an dealing with male and female interaction outside of marriage. A man and a woman cannot be together alone, therefore a male patient might refuse to be examined by a female healthcare worker. Modesty is also a key concept in Islam, so some female patients refuse to receive normal treatment for cervical cancer or other illness dealing with genitalia. Their refusal can lead to worsening symptoms and even death depending on the severity of the disease. Many hospitals approach these issues by providing more modest hospital gowns for the patient, having a “chaperone” of sorts of the same sex in the room with the patient and doctor, and even requiring the doctor to wear more modest clothing or a head covering when seeing the patient.
Probably the most difficult barrier to overcome is when a patient strongly adheres to prior remedies from their home country, such as herbal remedies or cultural rituals. When a person moves to the United States from another country, they often have a difficult time adjusting their culture, partly because they don't want to and partly because it is very difficult to break habits. Acculturation is when a person modifies or adapts their behavior to mirror that of the majority around them.
Another cultural barrier is contradictory diagnoses in different countries. A doctor in the United States might diagnose a patient with HIV/AIDS (Human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome), while a doctor in another country might diagnose a patient with the same symptoms with the flu. This could be because the second doctor does not have access to modern medical equipment, and believed that the flu-like symptoms actually were from the flu. Depending on the diagnosis, the patient receives different treatment methods and medication. If the patient does not receive the proper treatment for their illness, they could deteriorate and their life could be endangered.
Another example of differing patient analyses occurred in Haiti, after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck in January of the year 2010. American aid relief workers went into the country in order to help the homeless and injured victims of the natural disaster. Paul Waggoner, a doctor from Dallas, was working in a relief hospital when a man brought his infant son in for treatment. The doctor quickly saw that the infant had already passed away, but the man sought help from a local witch doctor anyway. The Haitian witch doctor explained that the baby was still alive because his eyes and mouth were still open, and that the doctor had turned the child into a zombie. In America, doctors would have quickly noticed that the eyes and mouth were open due to rigor mortis setting in, but the highly superstitious Haitians believed it was due to the use of voodoo. Waggoner was arrested in Haiti with charges for kidnapping the child, turning it into a zombie, and trying to sell it. Relief workers were not allowed to return to that region, therefore preventing treatment for hundreds of people.