Chapter 4
The ability to provide respectful, effective care that considers a person’s cultural beliefs, language, values, and practices while recognizing one’s own assumptions and biases.
Cultural competence
A generalized belief about a group that assumes its members share particular characteristics and overlooks individual differences.
Stereotype
A person’s experience and interpretation of feeling unwell, including how symptoms affect daily life.
Illness
In cultural assessment, a person’s belief about their ability to influence surroundings, health, and life events, rather than having these determined by fate or outside forces.
Environmental control
A person outside their country who cannot or will not return because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on characteristics such as race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.
Refugee
The expected behaviors and responsibilities associated with a person’s position in a family, group, or society.
Role
An organized system of beliefs, practices, and rituals concerning the sacred or divine, often shared by a community.
Religion
The shared and learned beliefs, values, customs, practices, and ways of communicating that influence a group’s way of life.
Culture
A person’s sense of ownership or control over a physical space and their response when others enter or use that space.
Territoriality
A shared cultural identity associated with common ancestry, history, language, traditions, or geographic origins.
Ethnicity
A family network that includes relatives beyond parents and children, such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Extended family
A disturbance in the body’s or mind’s structure or function that can be identified through clinical findings.
Disease
A person’s search for or experience of meaning, purpose, connection, or the sacred, which may or may not involve religion.
Spirituality
Shared expectations or rules about acceptable behavior within a group or society.
Norms
A family unit consisting of a parent or parents and their children.
Nuclear family
Social and cultural expectations about behaviors, responsibilities, and activities associated with different genders.
A social classification based largely on perceived physical characteristics and ancestry; racial categories do not represent distinct biological divisions of humanity.
Race
A preconceived judgment or attitude toward someone based on perceived group membership rather than individual knowledge or experience.
Prejudice