Response to Discussion

Introduction

Regards for the post and it is insightful to come across a health practitioner with a sense of strong cultural values and beliefs. The topic in question is quite important in promoting professionalism, especially in healthcare provision. Healthcare providers interact with a lot of people from different ethnicities, culture, and religion among others. Therefore, it is important that health practitioners acquire knowledge and skills of different cultures in addition to the professional education to help them cope with different patients from the different backgrounds(Mendes, 2018).

Possessing knowledge of different ethnicities, culture and religion provide healthcare providers with the ability to offer insightful health education to promote healthy living. Most people suffer from deficiencies that are available to them, but following a lack of knowledge, they are unable to utilize them. Under the guidance of a health practitioner who possesses knowledge of the surrounding environment, the patient can utilize available resources for health benefits. Sometimes foreigner patients are misdiagnosed or fail to seek medical attention due to the language barrier. However, in the presence of healthcare providers with knowledge of different languages, the practitioner and patient can communicate through interpretation (McMurray & Clendon, 2013).

All in all, knowledge of different ethnicities, religion and culture, is not enough to cater for the health needs of patients. Health practitioners require professional training and education. However, the combination of knowledge from professional training and ethnic beliefs helps health practitioners understand different people treating them as individuals with individual needs. (Conway et al., 2017). In addition, healthcare providers need to have and practice good interpersonal skills to be able to get accurate information as well as give back accurate feedback to patients. Combination of communication and good interpersonal skills enable the creation of a good rapport that is crucial to creating a trustworthy, respectful and honest environment that is important between patients and health practitioners.