The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

Paper details:

The purpose of this assignment is to explore how ethics and culture, particularly cultural misunderstandings, played a role in the care of Lia Lee, the central figure of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. This assignment counts as 10% of overall course grade. Paper should NOT exceed 3 pages, not including title or reference pages.

Paper must be properly formatted via APA style and include a title page, body of the paper with appropriate APA-style headings, and references (even if the only reference cited is The Spirit Catches You).

The body of the paper must include responses to the following questions:
1. In the book, Lia Lee’s Hmong family and her American doctors had two differing explanatory models of illness.
a. What is meant by an explanatory model of illness? (5 points)
b. Describe two explanatory models of illness presented in the book. (5 points)
c. Formulate one question that would elicit a patient’s explanatory model of illness when gathering subjective data during a health history assessment. (5 points)
2. It is clear that many of Lia’s doctors and nurses were heroic in their efforts to help Lia, and that Lia’s parents cared for her deeply; yet, the arguably preventable tragedy still occurred. Based on your understanding of what you read, what might have prevented this tragedy? (10 points)
3. How did reading about the history of the Hmong people influence your understanding of Lia’s story? (10 points)
4. On page 94-95, the author meets and has her first conversation with Sukey, the psychologist at Merced Community Outreach Services. Sukey explained, “Psychological problems do not exist for the Hmong, because they do not distinguish between mental and physical illness. Everything is a spiritual problem.” How is this different from the way American society views the domains of mental, physical, and spiritual health? (10 points)
5. Describe how your culture and/or life story is similar and/or different than that of Lia’s. (10 points)
6. What is the role of empathy and/or cultural humility when caring for patient’s from cultures different from your own? (10 points)

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

Paper details:

The purpose of this assignment is to explore how ethics and culture, particularly cultural misunderstandings, played a role in the care of Lia Lee, the central figure of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. This assignment counts as 10% of overall course grade. Paper should NOT exceed 3 pages, not including title or reference pages.

Paper must be properly formatted via APA style and include a title page, body of the paper with appropriate APA-style headings, and references (even if the only reference cited is The Spirit Catches You).

The body of the paper must include responses to the following questions:
1. In the book, Lia Lee’s Hmong family and her American doctors had two differing explanatory models of illness.
a. What is meant by an explanatory model of illness? (5 points)
b. Describe two explanatory models of illness presented in the book. (5 points)
c. Formulate one question that would elicit a patient’s explanatory model of illness when gathering subjective data during a health history assessment. (5 points)
2. It is clear that many of Lia’s doctors and nurses were heroic in their efforts to help Lia, and that Lia’s parents cared for her deeply; yet, the arguably preventable tragedy still occurred. Based on your understanding of what you read, what might have prevented this tragedy? (10 points)
3. How did reading about the history of the Hmong people influence your understanding of Lia’s story? (10 points)
4. On page 94-95, the author meets and has her first conversation with Sukey, the psychologist at Merced Community Outreach Services. Sukey explained, “Psychological problems do not exist for the Hmong, because they do not distinguish between mental and physical illness. Everything is a spiritual problem.” How is this different from the way American society views the domains of mental, physical, and spiritual health? (10 points)
5. Describe how your culture and/or life story is similar and/or different than that of Lia’s. (10 points)
6. What is the role of empathy and/or cultural humility when caring for patient’s from cultures different from your own? (10 points)