Essay On Benchmark Assessment

Benchmark Assessment

Benchmark Assessment can be denoted as a short test that can be administered to understand a culture, social way of life or performance of an individual community or schools if they meet certain set standards. Benchmark is thus a tool that is typically used to measure growth, performance or procedure to see if they meet the set standards (Van De Vijver, 2004). Heritage Assessment is a tool for benchmark assessment that allows the involved persons to acquire information that entails patient's health, culture, beliefs, and values. Heritage assessment is important in that it provides the concerned health authorities information that enables them to provide the patient with cultural health care necessitated. An individual heritage encompasses all the details that concern cultural practices, ethnoreligious practices and traditional beliefs (Kuniak, 2014). In Heritage assessment the concerned persons are always the nurses, thus nurses do obtain a bulk of information about an individual, family or a group of cultures so as to offer nursing services as per the concerned group. The information often inquired included the origin of the ancestors, country of origin, sibling’s information, culture and religion, food eaten by the culture and the native language spoken by the patient (Kondo-Brown, 2003). The paper intends to open a discourse on heritage assessment performed on two Russian Minority cultures. The paper will also focus on the families traditions; identify commonly shared traditions, health restoration and protection and health maintenance in those cultures.
The state Kazakhstan and Estonia are the major Russian state republic with large number of minority tribes and thus minority cultures (Kuniak, 2014). The paper will begin with applying the heritage assessment tool to evaluate the needs of minority culture in Estonia and Kazakhstan in terms of health. The heritage assessment focused on detailing the entire profile of an individual from the minority Russian cultures of Estonia and Kazakhstan (Van De Vijver, 2004). The result elicited from the study showed both negative and positive response from the native minority Russian cultures. Some of the negative results were that a few could be able to identify with their traditional ways of life. It should note that one identity is very vital when studying one's heritage for the purposes of health benefit. Though, most of the studied individual, could not identify with their original identity the few who could make it easy made it easy for nurses to deliver quality health service (Kondo-Brown, 2003). The ones who could not quickly identify their origin gave the nurses on the ground hard time in quality heritage health service delivery. The study on heritage assessment brought forth the belief that heritage assessment is beneficial because one learns traditional meals and medicines that have helped a particular culture. The information is used to enhance the well-being of a particular culture.
The main areas of interest in heritage assessment of the minority Russian culture are personal heritage, health heritage, patient heritage and nursing heritage (Kuniak, 2014). In assessing such attributes, nurses will have adequate knowledge of how to deal with health issues of the minority cultures. The heritage assessment is thus a tool that aims at integrating the all the mentioned aspects is to have complete health and physical history for natural treatment of patients. From the study, it can be concluded that health traditions vary among the minority tribes (Kuniak, 2014). The variety is so vast that the paper cannot discuss it all but will majorly consider health restoration, health maintenance, and health protection.
Health maintenance cannot be completed assessed without a glimpse of how the Russian culture is to the public. The Russian culture has been known as the culture of the peasantry communes its history wind back to 1971 when most of the minority cultures were peasants (Van De Vijver, 2004). Moreover, Russian population had a greater divide due to socialist philosophy. The ideological divide lead to socio-economic division which also had an impact on health disparities of the minority cultures. The record has it that Kazakhstan and Estonia have experienced stumpy health status has compared with the other major cultures (Kondo-Brown, 2003). It believed that negligence and traditional practices are some of the reason such record exists.
Taking a deeper look at the Russian culture as per promotion group we discover that most of the people in minor cultures have some behaviors that impact directly to their lives (Kondo-Brown, 2003). Some of the lifestyle behavior includes taking liquor, smoking, taking lot calories, no health insurance, taking hot toddies. If the characteristic that impact on the general health of the public can be narrowed, the paper will also discuss the age group effect. The minority health issues begins at an early age this is because the economy status of such groups does not allow them to enjoy some health benefits enjoyed by other groups like health insurance (Van De Vijver, 2004). The low health status will thus continue as one age up since the foundation was not that strong when one was a baby. Chronic conditions between men and women are another basic factor to be considered.
Health protection and restoration among the Russian minority is very poor since the culture shuns away from modern ways of health-care. The information collected from the cultures shows that whiskey taking and smoking is still very common behavior among the population (Kondo-Brown, 2003). Such lifestyle are known to deteriorate the health of the people involved, nurses, and health –care experts are, therefore, obligated to come up with ways to control such habits. The cultures were also found to be taking lots of calories and not involving themselves in the physical body exercises. The health experts will thus use the information to advise the population of minor cultures appropriately. The nurses have acted well as per the information gained from heritage assessment and there is commendable improvement since most people belonging to minority culture have stopped taking liquor and smoking so as to improve their health (Kondo-Brown, 2003). Most people have also started taking insurance both for the family and for themselves so as cater for health cost that may arise unexpectedly. The traditions are thus shifting from the sedentary way of life to a modern way of life where one focuses on the future of their health and the people they care about.

Conclusion

Heritage assessment is a key tool when one wants to improve the social health care of a community more so the marginalized communities in Russian states of Estonia and Kazakhstan. The disparity that exists can be identified; health condition will then be solved using the information gained. Heritage assessment thus enables health workers to alleviate assumptions that exist and face the core problem the finally solved it.

References

Van De Vijver, F. J., & Phalet, K. (2004). Assessment in multicultural groups: The role of acculturation. Applied Psychology, 53(2), 215-236.
Kondo-Brown, K. (2003). Heritage language instruction for post-secondary students from immigrant backgrounds. Heritage Language Journal, 1(1), 1-25.
Kuniak, M., Azizova, T., Day, R., Wald, N., Suyama, J., Zhang, A., & Slaughter, D. M. (2014). The Radiation Injury Severity Classification system: an early injury assessment tool for the frontline health-care provider.