What is culture?... And what does it mean for us health care providers...

Culture... A word we all know but do we know what it means?
It may not seem important to most but it is becoming more and more pertinent in Health Care as it forms an integral part of the services we provide therefore allowing the 'delivery of high-quality medical care to all members of society'

In an article I read based on this very topic there were a few things that stood out to me. These were:

If we 'treat the concept of culture as static you are at risk of objectifying individuals whose appearance, language, national origin, religion, sexual orientation is different from majority into overly simplistic descriptions of character and behaviour'....

And culture 'is not rigid and is beyond knowledge, skills and attitudes more a type of thinking and knowing- a critical consciousness- of self, others and the world'

And lastly..
'To have this critical consciousness is not learning lists of attributes or a set of questions. It is the development of knowledge and awareness to carry out the social roles and responsibilities of a physician"

SO culture.. a very simple easy word but with a very complex, extremely broad definition. For me, culture is a hard concept to grasp and so my "critical consciousness" is definitely still developing. I even youtubed videos to try gain some clarity.. This is what I stumbled upon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57KW6RO8Rcs

Culture is our way of life... Culture is everything really...

But anyway one a lighter note, maybe we all just need a little bit of a culture shock.. watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkZyvDZFC8Q