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Bridging Culture Gaps: Using Medical Anthropology To Mitigate Risk
Program Code:
SA-18
Date:
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Time:
2:30 PM to 3:30 PM
EST
PRESENTER
:
Melissa Retter,
MA, CPHRM, Risk Manager,
Poudre Valley Health System - Medical Center of the Rockies
Melissa Retter is the Risk Manager at Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland, Colorado. After living in Chile for 17 years, she developed an interest in cross-cultural communications. She obtained her bachelors in International Communications, and subsequently traveled to Canada where she earned her masters in Medical Anthropology. Her ethnographic studies focused on individual health and illness beliefs and treatment-seeking behaviors within a diverse array of settings. In an effort to continually improve the patient's healing experience, she has developed unique service excellence curriculums for hospitals throughout Colorado that are founded on industry wide best practices and anthropological insight.
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Description
Healthcare encounters are laden with unspoken cultural expectations related to diverse health and illness beliefs, and patients who feel a lack of understanding may react with anger and mistrust when an adverse event occurs. Instead of an exhaustive repository of individual beliefs and behaviors, basic anthropological frameworks can shed light on the nuances of human information processing. This session describes the relationship between illness narratives, information processing and explanatory models and illustrates the correlation between compassion and risk management.
LEARNER OUTCOMES:
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Define Patient, Disease, Illness, Sickness, Culture, and Health Culture.
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Describe the relationship between illness narratives, information processing and explanatory models.
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Recognize the correlation between compassionate relationships and risk management.