Healthcare Hispanic Community and Healthcare This Paper

Healthcare

Hispanic Community and Healthcare

This paper is an examination of how the Hispanic community experiences healthcare. The data from a number of articles related to the subject form the basis for the conclusions reached in the analysis.

One study looked at whether Hispanic-specific training should be included for healthcare worker training. It was found that there is a serious lack of training that is currently implemented regardless the community examined. Healthcare workers were unaware of social conventions that were normal among their Hispanic clients which limited the effectiveness of the healthcare treatment given. Because women were unable to discuss personal problems with male healthcare workers and males had similar issues with females, it was difficult for the various agencies to be truly effective. The recommendation, of course, was to include a training curriculum that included cultural training.

Another issue that Hispanic individuals faced is that they were underrepresented in hospice arrangements. The initial conjecture was that in many Hispanic cultures the family and community took care of the infirm at end-of-life. This may play a role, but the authors of the study also wanted to determine if the access to hospice was lessened because the individuals within the Hispanic community eligible for hospice did not receive the same access to healthcare prior to needing hospice services. The team found that the underrepresentation had more to do with a lack of access to healthcare interventions that could have led to an individual gaining hospice rather than the fact that hospice was not something that the community deemed appropriate. This finding solidifies the results of the previously examined study. A lack of training has caused a disparity among cultures. The healthcare community needs to realize the cultural gaps it faces and train workers to be more cognizant when they are occurring.

The final study used a qualitative method to determine how adults within a school's staff saw healthcare disparities for their urban and rural students of Hispanic heritage. The purpose of the study was to determine where the gaps occurred in the suppositions of the staff. According to the study, those people interviewed realized that their students suffered from poor vision care, and there was also an awareness of the teenage pregnancy rate among Hispanic students. The issue found was that other than these two issues, the interviewees did not believe that there were any other great healthcare disparities for their Hispanic students. They were not aware of the fact that mental health services and other physical health disparities existed among the students.