SOCIOCULTURAL DIMENSION OF HEALTH CARE SERVICE: THE CONTEXT OF PRIVATE HOSPITAL IN NEPAL
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53555/eijhss.v8i3.138Keywords:
health care services, socio-cultural dimensions of health, social cognitive theoryAbstract
Health is an existential reality. This means an individual’s value is recognized until s/he exists in the world. Existentialism and human health thus are complementary to each other. Viewing human health with the lens of existentialism provides us an understanding that it is the health through which human being claims themselves as the most valuable creature in this world.
Health care approach therefore seems to be existentially significant in all endeavours of human life, may it be the context of family or other health care institutions such as hospitals. I in this context would like to argue that whether the health care services delivered to the patients are existentially significant. A human being is commonly known as a social creature. That is, they are circumscribed within the social norms, values, guidelines, socio-economic class and the like. In this context, one may raise question of the kind: Do these dimensions of human life influence the quality health care services imparted to them in hospitals? Or, do the hospitals norms, values, guidelines often ignore or undermine these social aspects of patients while imparting quality health care? In this article, I bring forth some key socio-cultural dimensions and their influence over quality health services delivered in private hospitals in Nepal. The learning from such scholarly discussion about health care institutions and its relationships with the socio- cultural limitations/prospects of the patients would serve as a milestone for the nurses and hospital managers/administrators to bring socio-cultural flavor in the strategies of patients’ treatment in private hospitals in Nepal.
References
. Adler, N. E., & Newman, K. (2002). Socioeconomic disparities in health: Pathways and policies. Health Affairs, 21(2), 60-76. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.21.2.60
. Antwi, Y. A., Moriya, A. S., & Simon, K. (2016). The relationship between education and health care access in the United States. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 27(2), 951-970. https://doi.org/10. 1353/hpu.2016.0076
. Betancourt, J. R., Green, A. R., Carrillo, J. E., & Park, E. R. (2016). Cultural competence and health care disparities: Key perspectives and trends. Health Affairs, 35(8), 1360-1368. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2016.0242
. Betancourt, J. R., Green, A. R., Carrillo, J. E., & Park, E. R. (2016). Cultural competence and health care disparities: Key perspectives and trends. Health Affairs, 35(8), 1360-1368. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2016.0242
. Braveman, P. A., Egerter, S. A., & Mockenhaupt, R. E. (2011). Broadening the focus: The need to address the social determinants of health. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 40(1), S4-S18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. amepre.2010.10.026
. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard
University Press.
. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2017). Social ecological model of health. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpao/state-local-programs/social-ecological-model health-promotion/index.html
. Coughlan, D., Turner, B., & Trujilo, A. (2013). Motivation for a health-literate health care systedoes socioeconomic status play a substantial role? Implications for an irish health policymaker. Journal of health communication, 158-171.
. Cutler, D. M. (2017). The importance of health policy and economic policy for health. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1385(1), 5-13. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.13328
. Daniel, K. (2009). An investigation of sin and evil in Africal cosmology. Institutional Repository, 145-155.
. Garthwaite, C., Gross, T., Notowidigdo, M. J., & Graves, J. A. (2018). Insurance expansion and hospital emergency department access: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act. Journal of Public Economics, 163, 99-112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2018.04.005
. Green, L. W., & Kreuter, M. W. (2005). Health program planning: An educational and ecological approach. McGraw-Hill Education.
. Hillemeier, M. M., Weisman, C. S., Chase, G. A., Dyer, A.-M., & Feinberg, M. (2007). Women's preconceptional health and use of health services: Implications for preconception care. Health Services Research, 42(2), 553-571.
. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6773.2006.00623.x
. Himmelstein, D. U., & Woolhandler, S. (2016). Public health's falling share of US health spending. American Journal of Public Health, 106(1), 56-57. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302973
. Institute of Medicine. (2013). U.S. health in international perspective: Shorter lives, poorer health. National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/13497
. Kirmayer, L. J., & Pedersen, D. (2014). Toward a new architecture for global mental health. Transcultural Psychiatry, 51(6), 759-776. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461514545002
. Kleinman, A., & Benson, P. (2006). Anthropology in the clinic: The problem of cultural competency and how to fix it. PLoS Medicine, 3(10), e294. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030294
. Lau, R., Quardel, M. J., & Karen, H. (1990). Development and Change Young Adult's Preventive Health Beleifs and Behaviour Influence from parents and Peers. Journal of Health and Sociall Behaviour, 240-259.
. Lu, C. Y., & Halfon, N. (2017). Racial and ethnic disparities in childhood asthma in the United States. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 28(1), 51-63. https://doi.org/10.1353/hpu.2017.0017
. McLeroy, K. R., Bibeau, D., Steckler, A., & Glanz, K. (1988). An ecological perspective on health promotion programs. Health Education Quarterly, 15(4), 351-377.
. Montez, J. K., Hummer, R. A., Hayward, M. D., Woo, H., Rogers, R. G., & Olshansky, S. J. (2019). The relationship between education and health: Reducing disparities through a https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-040218-043750
. National Center for Cultural Competence. (2017). What is cultural competence? Retrieved from https://nccc. georgetown. edu/ about-us/what-is-cultural-competence/
. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. (2021). Ecological approaches in environmental health research. Retrieved from https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/supported/translational/ecological/index.cfm.
. Public Health England. (2018). Education, employment, and health: An evidence review. https://www.gov.uk/ government/publications/education-employment-and-health-an evidence-review
. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (2017). Culture of health action framework. Retrieved from https://www.rwjf. org/en/library/research/2017/05/culture-of-health-action framework.html
. Rosenbaum, S., Shaefer, H. L., & Schoeni, R. F. (2016). Employment and health outcomes: A systematic review of evidence. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 61(5), 5-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/0706743716650778
. Sallis, J. F., Owen, N., & Fisher, E. B. (2008). Ecological models of health behavior. Health behavior and health education: Theory, research, and practice, 4, 465-485.
. Stokols, D. (1996). Translating social ecological theory into guidelines for community health promotion. American Journal of Health Promotion, 10(4), 282-298. World Health Organization. (2019). Health and culture. https://www. who.int/culture/en/
