"Doing the Month": Exploring Chinese Culture

Cultural values and practices significantly affect patient care and education. Every effort must be made on the healthcare works part, especially nurses, to understand and integrate cultural customs into their interventions and teachings. The majority of Chinese women practice a tradition called "doing the month" after childbirth. They spend a month on best-rest, isolated in their homes from the public, and are expected to perform ancestral rituals such as diet restrictions and abstaining from bathing. This paper reviews three articles on the topic, including a classic article, and determined that social and industrial advances have changed the manner in which the rituals are performed. However, the rationales behind the cultural practice have for the most part remained the same. Therefore, cultural competency must be achieved by nurses in order to facilitate improved communication and interventions with Chinese women in their early postpartum period.