Maybe I am just a linguistics junky, but I am intrigued by how differences in definitions create so much conflict in The Spirit Catches You. Raquel Arias felt stressed and frustrated because she felt her treatment of Hmong patients was "sub-optimal" care. Shouldn't "optimal" be defined by patient outcome? And if a patient does better with lower-tech treatment and some placebo effect, isn't that course of action "optimal" for that particular patient as opposed to an invasive procedure that is frightening and does psychological harm? Similarily, nurses who could not deal with Hmong births were imagining a completely different experience than what a Hmong woman would imagine under the concept of "birth." The definition of "well-being" already varies person-to-person, but in The Spirit Catches You, it varies so much that the meanings of "success" and "failure" in treating Lina were at times opposite in her family's perspective and her doctors' perspective.