Week 6 - Miguel Flores

Western medicine have been structured and developed to follow systems of methods that dictates the proper way of monitoring and delivering childbirth. Hard medical science, as they call it, nurses, OBGYN doctors, and physicians do what they do because they have been trained under the guises and knowledges outlined by predecessors and health care educators. Like an assembly line, everyone partakes on a role and goes through the motions of their duties and responsibilities to fulfill and accommodate their patients. Hospitals are called “hospitals” because people who are working in it should be hospitable to the needs of their patients, but they lack an emotional connection towards the people they interact and treat with. Although they have been trained to deal with pressing social matters when interacting patients from all socioeconomic backgrounds, they still lack in understanding various cultural beliefs and this is why many, especially Asian Americans, prefer physicians who look like them or understands their traditional circumstances. In these gaps, we see Western medicine is lagging behind in conforming to the special needs of their patients. In areas where they have shortcomings, health care professionals tend to do what they know best: go by the books and standardized their ways to fit a general patient. The problem with this is not only the issue of cultural ignorance, but the close-mindedness of people who work in the medical industry. Hospitals are run like businesses and they look after patients as cash cows that provides money to the hospitals and lines the pockets of doctors who are “buddy-buddy” with CEOs or hospital owners. Now, I am not saying that all doctors are like that, but we see a trend among doctors that only does their profession because they are motivated by money. Money is good, but if you do your job because you are motivated by the materialistic rewards, then these doctors should think twice on their participation in the industry.

 

A Zaatari camp nurse holding a newborn of a Jordanian refugee from Syria. Photo credit: Elizabeth Wang, March 6, 2019, NewSecurityBeat.com

The new century brought forth a growing popularity in alternative healing and therapeutic practices. A different ideological atmosphere and a growing diversity in the global socioeconomic climate encouraged the emergence of alternative healing centers, research studies, and alternative healing occupations. The study on rural Jordanian mothers explores the clear possibility in unionizing cultural beliefs and medical science on postnatal care. However, hard medical science have contradicted their ancient cultural beliefs and recommended to enhance their cultural practices in taking care of an infant. In this stance, though ethnographic researchers celebrates the Jordanian women’s preservation of their cultural beliefs, medical science closes the gaps and misconceptions surrounding Jordanian infant care. This is not a method of suppression, but an enlightenment that could improve the way Jordanians practice their cultural beliefs on postnatal care. Now, it is up to the Jordanian women if they want to adhere on the recommendations stated by the researchers, but this exploration in using medical science in improving their cultural practices definitely outlines a starting point in medical science’s openness in entertaining cultural beliefs on Jordanian infant care.