Question

Of the definitions of cultural competence which one resonates with you and why?

BOX 12-1 One Definition of Cultural Competence The following is one of the most widely used definitions: "Cultural competence is a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency or among professionals and enables that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations (Cross et al. 1989, 13)." As you can see, this is highly oriented towards cultural competence as a process, as a set of things to do. Reference is made to attitudes, but the language of the definition is clearly pragmatic. There are other ways to think about this. We have gone into the issue in more depth, and in this chapter, a different definition and guidelines will be offered.

Answer 1

Cultural competence is a dynamic process, where an individual or health care agency develops culturally competent interventions based on the knowledge of cultural beliefs, heritage, behaviours and attitudes to whom they provide care. Providing culturally competent care requires the higher level refinement of cognitive and psychomotor skills and personal beliefs. It is important to identifying the fact that each individual is culturally unique and is a product of experiences in their life, norms of the society in which they live and cultural beliefs.

Although the racial and cultural groups show huge diversity, knowing the baseline data of a particular cultural or racial group provides a meaningful basis to render culturally competent care. Irrespective of the level of care, i.e. primary, secondary or tertiary, a nurse can plan and implement appropriate patient specific intervention in a variety of clinical settings if they have knowledge of culturally relevant information.