Culture is a pattern of behavior and values shared by an ethnic group. Cultural heritage is a set of traditions within the culture that is hand down from the older generation to the younger generation within the family. These traditions influence the family’s decisions in relation to their diet, education, daily living activities, religious beliefs and practices and also health and illness beliefs. In this paper, the author will focus on the usefulness of applying a heritage assessment in evaluating the needs of a person as a whole. Three different cultures including authors will be discussed about the health maintenance, health promotion, and health restoration. The author will also evaluate health traditions which are based on her own other two families. The evaluation of different culture will reveal similarities and differences in traditions, which can help nurses to provide holistic approach towards care delivery to gain optimal health outcomes. Heritage assessment tool is a very good way in finding out patients’ cultural values and beliefs towards health maintenance, protection, and restoration for a nurse to take a holistic approach towards providing care and education to the patient.
In summarizing what the author has learned from the Heritage Assessment Tool (HAT) is that, the author and her husband both were born in a Muslim country and lived there for the best part of their childhood. Her husband migrated to US when he was fifteen and the author migrated to US at the age of twenty-two. Their parents and grand parents are from the same country and share the same cultural and religious beliefs and practices. The author and her family belongs to a religious institution and celebrates the holidays and festivals by cooking traditional food and invites family for meals and celebrations like singing and dancing with traditional music. Author and her husband are raising their two children in a house in a suburb community where their
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