Dr. Williams treats three different patients who all represent different cultural backgrounds. The first patient interaction …show more content…
Williams are both negative encounters. Dr. Williams’ appointments with the Waleed family and the Phan families are both disastrous because of Dr. Williams limited cultural knowledge as well as his personal racial stereotypes. The Waleed’s, a Sudanese family were mistaken for Haitian by Dr. Williams based solely off of Mr., Waleed’s accent. Dr. Williams is dismissive of the Waleed’s fear of their daughter Breshay having had the evil eye cast upon her. Things are no different in the appointment with the Phan family; Dr. Williams was rushed and all business when he was addressing the mother, Chi, about her son Duong’s treatment options. In the Vietnamese culture rushing and speaking to the mother is not acceptable, and Dr. Williams completely mishandled the encounter. Dr. Williams’ limited cultural knowledge drove a wedge between patient and provider and resulted in a loss of trust because the Pham family wanted to seek out a different healthcare provider. The biggest misstep that Dr. Williams makes is requesting that Rita call child protective services because Chi has tried Duong’s medicine. His lack of cultural knowledge not only has an impact on his patients heath care, but now it is having a negative impact on their family structure as …show more content…
A study shows that people with low health literacy have a higher occurrence of Emergency Room visits, longer hospital stays, but fewer routine outpatient visits (Cho, Lee, Arozullah, & Crittenden, 2008, p. 1810). Low health literacy has an inherent level of unawareness in the necessity of preventative care on a patient’s behalf. Additionally low health literacy can be a cause of poor patient-provider communication, and lead to a lack of treatment compliance. Often patients with low health literacy do not know what questions to ask to better understand their provider. This is reinforced in the case study with the Pham family, when they do not understand all of the the terms that Dr. Williams is using and in turn have a difficult time processing the best approach to Duong’s healthcare. The onus for this issue is on both the patient and the provider, but the medical professional should understand that not everyone understands medical terminology. Dr. Williams should have asked the patients if there were any questions and if they understood everything as it was being explained to