Question

What is the importance of Anthropology in nursing

Answer 1

Anthropologists have more in-depth education and experiences in the analysis of social and cultural systems, which could assist nurses in this area. An accurate and comprehensive sociocultural care per- spective is so essential to help anthropologists understand human behavior in diverse sociocultural systems.

Medical Anthropology is a subfield of anthropology that draws upon social, cultural, biological, and linguistic anthropology to better understand those factors which influence health and well being (broadly defined), the experience and distribution of illness, the prevention and treatment of sickness, healing processes, the social relations of therapy management, and the cultural importance and utilization of pluralistic medical systems.

The discipline of medical anthropology draws upon many different theoretical approaches. It is as attentive to popular health culture as bioscientific epidemiology, and the social construction of knowledge and politics of science as scientific discovery and hypothesis testing. Medical anthropologists examine how the health of individuals, larger social formations, and the environment are affected by interrelationships between humans and other species; cultural norms and social institutions; micro and macro politics; and forces of globalization as each of these affects local worlds.

Use in nursing as

Health ramifications of ecological “adaptation and maladaptation”

Popular health culture and domestic health care practices

Local interpretations of bodily processes

Changing body projects and valued bodily attributes

Perceptions of risk, vulnerability and responsibility for illness and health care

Risk and protective dimensions of human behavior, cultural norms and social institutions

Preventative health and harm reduction practices

The experience of illness and the social relations of sickness

The range of factors driving health, nutrition and health care transitions

Ethnomedicine, pluralistic healing modalities, and healing processes

The social organization of clinical interactions

The cultural and historical conditions shaping medical practices and policies

Medical practices in the context of modernity, colonial, and post-colonial social formations

The use and interpretation of pharmaceuticals and forms of biotechnology

The commercialization and commodification of health and medicine

Disease distribution and health disparity

Differential use and availability of government and private health care resources

The political economy of health care provision.

The political ecology of infectious and vector borne diseases, chronic diseases and states of malnutrition, and violence

The possibilities for a critically engaged yet clinically relevant application of anthropology