Ethnophysiology is a realm of ethnomedicine that focuses on the psychology, attitudes, and behaviors of an indigenous populace in a specified ethnic, racial, or cultural group regarding how its residents typically perceive human bodily functions.
Missionary healthcare workers need to identify those factors that are endemic in the local culture that may potentially facilitate or impede their endeavors. This intelligence gathering and reconnaissance should be as comprehensive as possible during the preparatory phases and ongoing after their arrival on site.
Knowing that there exists such a wide diversity of healthcare perceptions throughout the world and expecting the unexpected will facilitate the adjustment to otherworldly cultures and ethnic groups.
Missionary healthcare workers need to always find comfort and encouragement knowing that whenever they do their best, God will do the rest.
Manifesting an enduring tenderheartedness and servile compassion towards the afflicted and needy will superbly witness to the world.
Contextualizing the enrapturing hope of the Gospel through any missionary work is applicable and needed in every ethnic and geographic setting.
This course will heighten the students’ expectation of the obvious as well as unforeseen cultural obstacles that awaits them in every mission field.
Missionary healthcare workers need to keep their hearts upturned and be neither intimidated nor derailed by the pagan practices that they will encounter.
This course will greatly broaden the students’ awareness of the diversity of the healthcare mindsets, spiritual beliefs, and behaviors that are the norms in other societies yet so foreign to their own.
