Caring for Patients From Different Cultures.

Abstract

Caring for Patients From Different Cultures. 3rd ed. Galanti GA. Philadelphia, Pa, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004, softcover, 273 pp, $18.95. Principle 1 of the APTA Code of Ethics1 charges physical therapists with respecting the rights and dignity of all individuals and providing compassionate care. The APTA Guide for Professional Conduct,2 under Principle 1.1.A, states: A physical therapist shall recognize, respect, and respond to individual and cultural differences with compassion and sensitivity. The most recently revised Evaluative Criteria for Accreditation of Education Programs for the Preparation of Physical Therapists from the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education3 (CAPTE) drawing on the writing of Cross, Bazron, Dennis, and Issacs,4 defines cultural competence as: . . . an asset of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals that enables effective work in cross-cultural situations. 'Culture' refers to integrated patterns of human behavior that include the language, thought, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions of racial, ethnic, religious, or social groups. 'Competence' implies having the capacity to function effectively as an individual and an organization within the context of the cultural beliefs, behaviors, and needs presented by consumers and their communities. The CAPTE Evaluative Criteria3 state a specific professional practice expectation of cultural competence. The accreditation standards also require cultural competence in relation to communication, education, selection of appropriate tests and measures, plans of care, interventions, outcomes assessment, management of care delivery, and prevention, health promotion, fitness, and wellness. Geri-Ann Galanti, a faculty member of the Department of Anthropology at California State University, Los Angeles, at the Division of Nursing at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and in the Doctoring Curriculum at the UCLA School of Medicine, has authored a book that speaks to any one in a health care profession who is interested in how culture may affect interactions in the clinic. The book is organized into 13 chapters. The first chapter is an introductory chapter that covers relevant anthropological concepts: defining cultures and subcultures, discriminating between stereotypes and generalizations, how values shape culture, and how a culture's relationship to nature, ethnocentrism, time orientation, social structure, and beliefs of disease etiology affect that culture's interactions in health care. The remaining 12 chapters relate stories of problems arising from cultural misunderstanding that the author has taken from the many experiences of her students. The chapters are divided into categories: communication and time orientation, pain, religion and spirituality, activities of daily living and the body, family, men and women, staff relations, birth, end of life, mental health, and traditional medicine. …