Cultural Barriers To Health Care

Several years ago in Colorado, a Mexican immigrant child was diagnosed with diabetes. The doctor told the mother of the child to use insulin as part of her treatment. After several weeks, the insulin did not appear to be helping the child. Apparently, the child's grandmother had been withholding the insulin shots because she thought they were addictive. She had been using herbal remedies that she had used previously in Mexico. Because of her misconceptions of American medicine and adherence to previous alternative remedies, the child's health was put at risk. This example is one of many where varying cultures create barriers to a person's wellbeing. Although many cultural barriers exist as an impediment to modern remedies of disease, there are ways healthcare workers can overcome these obstacles.
This is by far the easiest to overcome because it can be [academically] solved; other barriers are dealing with more psychological issues and cannot be solved just by hiring a translator. According to Washington Post, about 25 million people in America have difficulty speaking English because it is not their first language. That is about seven percent of the United States population of over 322 million. This is why many hospitals employ translators or bilingual staff members. However, professional translators can be expensive, costing anywhere from $50 to $100 an hour, so hospitals frequently have alternative solutions for solving linguistic barriers. An "ad hoc interpreter" is a relative or friend of the patient that can somewhat translate for the patient. Ad hoc interpreters are not always reliable and often have biased accounts of events that have occurred, but hospitals use them when information about the patient is absolutely vital and needed for immediate