Cultural Impacts on Occupational Engagement

"Culture describes the knowledge, beliefs, values, assumptions, perspectives, attitudes, norms, and customs that people acquire through membership in a particular society or group." (Hammell, 2013). A person's culture can impact their daily occupations and routines in many different ways. A client might not speak the primary language where they're at, causing difficulty in interpreting. Race and class might give a person limited and unequal access to life opportunities and poverty. Financial ability can impacts a person's daily occupations and routines. Sexual orientation can influence choices in occupation and how someone socially responds to them. Also, the discrimination against those with a disability. Some personal examples on how culture can impact daily occupations would be a man not thinking I could change my own tire because I am a woman. This man took my gender and assumed I couldn't complete this occupation because of it. Another example is, when I went to a country where they predominantly spoke Spanish and I spoke English, and was not able to understand/read directions around the city. My last personal example is when I was in college, I was not financially able to have a car and attend school. As a white, female coming from a middle class family, many people looked at me and treated me differently because they assumed I would have money because I was raised in a good home. Not being able to have a car often impacted my daily routines and occupations. I had to either walk or ask for rides from friends because I didn't have the mean to pay for an Uber or buy a car to get me to class everyday. An OT practitioner can use the cultural information of a client to inform their treatment goals and interventions by being culturally humiliated. As an OT practitioner, try not to have any prior assumptions about your clients culture and try to learn about the culture in the best interest for your client. "Cultural humility emphasizes the need to respect and be open to clients' culturally based understandings of their lives and the impact of structural inequalities on the occupational opportunities and well-being." (Hammell, 2013). To accomplish this and take it seriously requires the practitioner to engage in research and explore the individuals experiences. In the OT profession, the term cultural humility is preferred over cultural competence as we move towards greater cultural responsiveness in caring for our clients. Cultural humility allows for explorations of the cultural differences between the client and therapist without prior assumptions. Cultural competence is often assumed that the therapist comes from a dominant culture and the client is not.  As occupational therapists, we want to expand our knowledge of other cultures and how that affects our clients daily occupations. With cultural humility, this gives us the opportunity to explore and discover cultural differences with our clients. It is an approach to practice enhancing the relevance and inclusiveness of culture. In the OTPF-4, it states that cultural humility contributes to influence each cornerstones. "A cornerstone can be defined as something of great importance on which everything else depends" (AOTA, 2020). In conclusion, it is important to have cultural humility and be understanding of others cultures so that we can improve as individuals to be more inclusive. 

Hammell, K. R. (2013). Occupation, well-being, and culture: Theory and cultural humility / occupation, Bien-être et culture : La Théorie et l’humilité culturelle. Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 80(4), 224–234. https://doi.org/10.1177/0008417413500465

Occupational therapy practice framework: Domain and process—Fourth edition. (2020). The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 74(Supplement_2). https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2020.74s2001