What Makes a Great Leader (Essay Sample)

Sociology: 4 Questions
1. Lia Lee’s parents believed that their daughter’s illness was caused by evil spirits who were trying to control her soul (418). They attributed her ailment to foreign agency, and this influenced their interpretation of the medical professionals’ actions. They did not see western medicine as the appropriate cure and may have even seen it as interference with the real healing, which only shamanic rituals can provide (418). Lia Lee’s symptoms of illness were categorized by the doctors as symptoms of a well-established physical disease – epilepsy (418). This is the meaning that the symptoms had for them. The parents’ actions then seemed counter-productive from this perspective and potentially harmful.
2. The areas of cultural competence students are required to engage in include cultural self-examination, empathetic listening and questioning of patients, respect of patients’ conceptions of health and illness, and the recognition or cultural and racial bias and its elimination from the healthcare setting. The AAMC also lists the “epidemiology of population health,” “patient-centred care vs. physician-centred care,” cultural issues and challenges facing institutions, and “information on the history of the patient and their community of people” as target areas for the training of medical students (AAMC 9).