Providing healthcare services to the representatives of different cultures means being able to establish intercultural dialogue. Unless a healthcare specialist is capable of talking to the people that suffer from a particular disease, it is impossible to cure the latter. For example, there is a tangible difference between the concept of “being sick” (illness) and the conceptual entity of symptoms, diagnoses, and treatment approaches (diagnostic category) (Frake 115). Speaking of which, the means of identifying the ways to locate a deeper affinity between isolated and seemingly different symptoms in various patients may require thorough research.
It should also be born in mind that the alterations in the patterns of disease symptoms make the process of diagnosing the patient extremely complicated. Seeing that the names of diseases carry several elements, it is essential, yet nonetheless, very difficult to identify the dominant name. This does beg the question of whether a common ground is a viable reason for connecting several instances of a disease that do not have any symptoms in common other than the one stated above.
Though at first, one might assume that the problem of labeling a specific health issue is rooted in the issues within the current healthcare taxonomy, it, in fact, concerns linguistics rather than medicine (Foucault 18). In the realm of globalization, the possibility to create an intercultural dialogue has been provided, yet new challenges also emerged. At this point, the link between the globalization process and the emerging trends in healthcare needs to be mentioned.
Speaking of cultural fusion and the acceptance of new healthcare approaches, the phenomenon of biomedicine taps on the concepts of globalization and indigenization, therefore, linking healthcare to the key cultural processes (Kleinman 38).
Biomedicine is linked closely to the Western concept of progress. Because of the challenges that the 21st-century healthcare has faced, the priorities of biomedicine have been shifted from providing care to pursuing economic and political goals. Still, for a successful intervention, one must take the intercultural issues into account; particularly, the differences in the views of different cultures on healthcare, in general, should be analyzed closer. For example, the concept of healthcare adopted in the Lwezi tribe makes one wonder if the concept of treatment as a synonym to witchcraft in the Lwezi tribe prevents from advancing the Lwezi healthcare system (Bazinga 121).
It should also be noted that the assistance, which a healthcare professional is ready to provide to the patient, may not be enough. In most cases, it is required that the patient should be ready to cooperate. In other words, it is imperative that the patient should put a stop to the usurpation of their self. In each case of a disease or a disorder, a patient has their “possession of the fate of the happening” (Sansom 191), and it is the duty of a healthcare professional to make sure that the patient is provided with an opportunity to get a hold of themselves. Therefore, the necessity to make the patient completely conscious of both the treatment process and the changes that the patient undergoes is crucial for a successful intervention.
The consciousness of the patient, however, is often an uncharted road that a healthcare specialist must blaze a trail on, and the reification of the patient is often the only way of taking control over the process of diagnosing and treating one (Taussig 3). Accessing the consciousness of the patient, in its turn, presupposes that the cultural context should be taken into account (Bates 30); particularly, the origin of the patient and the environment, in which the problem emerged, should be analyzed. Some researchers, however, argue that in the course of treatment, there may be no patient – the personality of the latter should not conflict with the process of addressing a particular disorder or disease (Harvey 577).
Works Cited
Bates, Don G. “Why Not Call Modern Medicine ‘Alternative’?” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 583.1 (2002), 12–28. Print.
Bazinga, Deniz. “The Clan as Patient.” The Quest for Therapy in Lower Zaire. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 1978. 121–125. Print.
Foucault, Michele. “Space and Classes.” The Birth of the Clinic. New York, NY: Routledge. 2003. ix–21. Print.
Frake, Charles O. “The Diagnosis of Disease among the Subanun of Mindanao.” American Anthropologist 63.1 (1961), 113–132. Print.
Harvey, Thomas S. “Where There is no Patient: An Anthropological Treatment of a Biomedical Category.” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 32.4 (2008), 577–606. Print.
Kleinman, Arthur. “What Is Specific to Biomedicine?” Writing at the Margin. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 1995. 21–40. Print.
Sansom, Basil. “The Sick Who Do Not Speak.” In David Parkin (ed.), Semantic Anthropology. New York, NY: Academic Press. 1983. 181–193. Print.
Taussig, Michael T. “Reification and the Consciousness of the Patient.” Social Science and Medicine 14.1 (1980), 3–13. Print.