If the content you are seeing is presented as unstyled HTML your browser is an older version that cannot support cascading style sheets. If you wish to upgrade your browser you may download Mozilla or Internet Explorer for Windows.
Delivery mode: Paced/home-study online
Credits: 3 - Applied Studies
This course will critically examine the relationship between cultural factors and health/health care delivery. Students will explore how ethnicity, gender, social class, and the organization of health disciplines and health systems influence opportunities for health and the delivery of health care to clients, particularly vulnerable or marginalized populations.
After completing this course, students should be able to:
MHST/NURS 620 comprises online and print-based course materials.
Coburn, D., D'Arcy, C., & Torrance, G. (1998). Health and Canadian society: Sociological perspectives (3rd ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
The course includes Internet access to health-related websites around the world, participation in email, and computer conferencing with students from across the country. Students are expected to connect to an Internet Service Provider at their own expense.
MHST/NURS 620 consists of the following six units
Unit 1- Awareness: Understandings of Health and Culture
This unit has two purposes: to give students a chance to learn a bit about each other and their expectations for this course; and to start students on the path of developing awareness about the relationships between culture and health/health care.
Unit 2- Awareness: Critical Theory Perspectives
This unit has the following purposes: to help student develop awareness of the ways they think about phenomena, including culture and health; and to help students develop awareness of the perspectives of phenomena offered by critical theory.
Unit 3- Awareness: Discourse Analysis
This unit has the following purpose: to develop awareness of discourse analysis as an approach to reveal worldviews and power relations embedded in cultures that create inequities in health and health care delivery.
Unit 4- Reflection: Health and the Cultures of Social Class, Gender, and Ethnicity
The purpose of this unit is to provide the opportunity to reflect on cultural factors that influence health and health care delivery. Students apply principles of critical theory and discourse analysis to examine the relationships among social class, gender, ethnicity, and health.
Unit 5- Reflection: The Cultures of Health Care
The purpose of this unit is to provide the opportunity to apply principles of critical theory and discourse analysis in reflection about how the cultures of health professions and health systems influence health care delivery.
Unit 6- Action: Transforming Health Care
The purpose of this unit is to explore how a critical perspective of health and culture can lead to actions to transform health care in a direction of equity.
To receive credit for MHST/NURS 620, students must achieve a course composite grade of at least 60 per cent and a grade of at least 60 per cent on each written assignment. The weighting of the composite grade is as follows:
Conference | 20% |
Forum Leadership | 25% |
Assignment 1 | 30% |
Assignment 2 | 25% |
Total | 100% |
Feedback regarding conference participation will be ongoing. Quality of input (not quantity) is the goal. Feedback will focus on the student's ability to provide organized and original contributions that reflect analysis and synthesis of the material presented.
The assessment structure for MHST/NURS 620 indicates that 20% of the final grade is determined by participation in the course. Participation is measured against the following criteria.
Critical forum leadership provides students the opportunity to lead a conference discussion on one of five topics related to culture and health. In the discussion, students apply principles of critical theory and discourse analysis to examine the relationships between health and factors that influence health: social class, gender, ethnicity, and the cultures of health professions and health systems.
Assignment 1 invites students to analyze the discourse around a health-related topic relevant to their practice setting. Students locate resources (primarily journal articles and web-based information) that comprise the discourse about a health-related topic and analyze this discourse to determine the ways the topic is discussed and understood in our society.
Assignment 2 asks students to discuss how the discourse from Assignment 1 is evident in their practice setting, the influence of this on health care delivery, and actions that could transform the discourse to improve health care delivery.