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Literature Book Summary

In a perfect world, race, ethnicity and culture would have no negative effect on the medical care we receive. The effect is due to historical heritage more than skin color. What is meant by this statement? Provide examples (more than one) with page references where historical heritage affects the ability of the Lacks or Lee family to negotiate the health care system.  Consider health literacy, communication, ethics, and health disparities. The statement above is referring to what you've learned and been taught from your past experiences versus prejudices against skin color.  The Lacks family is prejudiced against John Hopkins Hospital due to the bad treatment that they received before and after the harvesting of Henrietta's cells, as well as the treatments that were done to other black people. When Henrietta went into the doctor for treatments for her cervical cancer, the doctors used radium (a chemical element).  This radium charred her from her breasts down to ...

Interdisciplinary Cultural Competence

What changes in attitudes, knowledge, and skills does diversity/cross-cultural tr aining  bring about?  Is there a common definition of cultural competence that is u seful in broad range of fields?  Reflect on progress toward your learning outcomes identified in post #3. In response to the first question, the one thing that changes with diversity/cross-cultural training  is a more positive attitude towards all types of people.  The reason why I think this is because people can be negative and stand offish to things that they do not know or understand.  In fact, some people don't want to understand some things for fear that they might change their ways.  When I was working in Mississippi I worked with a white man in one of the nursing homes.  He was a very nice man to work with, but he would always use the "N" word when talking about blacks and was kind of mean to the black people that worked there.  One night we went out for a couple d...

Cross Cultural Communication

Post a r eflect ion  on this statement and support or refute it. Many “culture-specific” training programs use an inventory of cultural characteristics of minority groups to help trainees understand and interact appropriately. Does this technique run the risk of perpetuating stereotypes and offending ethnic groups? Cite an  academic resource that supports  your position. I think that this is a great question!  I took a religion class and my professor brought up this same question about people learning about religion.  By learning more about religion would it make people more frustrated or would it make people  accept other people's religion easier.  Well, yes and no.  Comparing religion and culture-specific training, it really depends how biased you are towards a certain religion or a certain minority.  For example, my uncle was a Colonel in the Vietnam War and when he came back to the United States, he had a very hard time trusting or even...

Interprofessional Awareness

Identify two areas of similarity and one difference. Explain why the standards for your profession or major are the same or different from the CLAS standards for cultural competency.   Add the URL for the resource that you used for your comparison to CLAS. I currently work at the University of Wisconsin.  UW Health has been very proactive the last few years looking at cultural diversity.  In 2016 a new CEO was introduced and he saw the importance of having a Chief Diversity Officer.  He appointed one and she worked closely to adopt the National CLAS Standards for UW Health.   One similarity that UW Health standards has next to the National CLAS Standards is that we offer language assistance to individuals who have limited English proficiency and/or other communication needs.  The Interpreter Services department at UW Health offers in-person interpreters, interpreter services over the phone and interpreter services that are a live chat through i-Pa...

Self-Assessment of Understanding the Cultural Diversity Issues in Healthcare

To what extent do my beliefs, prejudices or biases influence my thinking in terms of providing service in my profession? Include several examples. I think in order to answer this question completely and for the reader to understand more about me, I need to give you a little history of my background.  I grew up in a small town outside of La Crosse, WI with a population of about 6,500 people.  When I was young the town was predominantly white with very few Blacks, Hispanics or Mexicans.  My religion was Lutheran and my parents were both educators at small schools.  My father was a guidance counselor at a neighboring school, so my brother and I had a lot of sit down conversations when we did something wrong versus getting spanked or being yelled at.  My mother was the school librarian where my brother and I attended grade school and junior high.  It was hard to do anything wrong at school because we knew that our mom would find out immediately and then we wo...

Personal Profile and Experience w/Diversity

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This is my first blog site, so I thought I'd post a picture of my wife and I.  I'm still trying to figure the ins and outs of this. My name is Brian Sparland.  I have started this blog as an assignment for a class that I am taking at the University of Milwaukee.  My wife Joy and I have been married for 14 years and I have two boys that are 7 named Calvin and Burke.  I am an avid golfer and have started getting my boys interested in the game.  I am an MRI, Ultrasound, Bone Density and Scheduling manager for the ambulatory clinics at the University of Wisconsin. I chose to get my Bachelor's degree once I started working at the University of Wisconsin and should be finished in the next two years.  Once I am completed with that I plan on going for my Masters Degree. My first personal experience with diversity came when I was in my early 20's.  I grew up in the Midwest, in the state of Wisconsin and just graduated from Radiography at Western College ...

The Danger of a Single Story Reflection:

W hat experience do I have with a “single-story ”?   I re-watched the video of the single-story reflection on YouTube that my professor had us listen to in order to complete this portion of assessment 3.  I found this woman's story very intriguing.  I thought of the experiences in my life where I've dealt with this.  I had many experiences, but the one that hit home the most was within the past five years.  In May of 2013 I was hired at the University of Wisconsin as one of the Radiology managers.  My background in Radiology was extensive.  I had graduated in 1996 from Western College in La Crosse, WI with an Associate's Degree in Radiography.  I worked in mobile x-ray for a couple of years in the Midwest, South and East coast.  I then performed MRI research and clinical MRI at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Froedtert hospital.  I worked their for three years in their Bio Physics & Radiology departments.  The next fi...