Cultural Assessment Paper on the Military

Cultural Assessment Paper on the Military

Cultural Assessment Paper on the Military

Introduction

Cultural skills are increasingly recognized as critical to overseas military and humanitarian operations. For demonstration, the US protecting against Regional and Cultural

Capabilities Assessment has identified the ability to integrate cultural knowledge and skills into mission execution as a critical cross-cultural competency for general purpose forces. As military operators engage in day-by-day and moment-by-moment decisions in the course of carrying out a mission, they need intercultural competence in order to make appropriate decisions and act on them in culturally appropriate ways. (Forest, 2009)

Culture can be viewed as all of those parts of life that surround and influence people from the time they are born. It is a vital part of why and how persons make decisions. A culture has four basic characteristics48it is learned from birth through the processes of language acquisition and socialization; it is shared by all members of the same group; it is this sharing of cultural beliefs and patterns that binds people together; (3) it is an adaptation to specific conditions related to environmental and technical factors and to the availability of natural resources; and (4) it is a dynamic, ever-changing process, passed from generation to generation. (Weslter, 2008)

Discussion

Health and illness, responsibilities

The definitions of health and disease in any society are culturally influenced. When military individuals become aware of a sign or symptom that indicates illness, they must make some choice about care, including the decision to perhaps not seek care. The choice is often based on the cultural characteristics and definitions of health, illness, and disease that these individuals accept as their own. American civilian and military healthcare are intimately intertwined. Indeed, military health care derives much of its culture from civilian healthcare. (Weslter, 2008)

American citizen health and nursing schools train most infantry doctors and nurses. The same professional standards usually govern both civilian and military healthcare practices as noted in the introductory comments to this chapter, when these concepts of health are similar to those of the healthcare professional, they receive little outward notice. The more these concepts differ from those of the healthcare professional, however, the more they are likely to be perceived as strange or not of relevance to the medical situation at hand and its successful resolution. For that very reason, this discussion of cultural concepts of health will begin with voodoo—a belief system that many medical ...