Question

How can community health nurses apply the strategies of cultural competence to their practice? Provide at least one example from each of the following four strategies: cultural preservation, cultural accommodation, cultural repatterning, and cultural brokering. What is a possible barrier to applying the strategy/example chosen?

Answer 1

Cultural competence is an vital attitude that every community health nurse need to learn and practice in their respective community area. Although there are some ways to improve the cultural competence, the Strategies of the cultural competence will provide the profound understanding in the cultural competence.Here are certain ways that community health nurse may apply this strategies of cultural competence;

• Every community health nurse primarily need to understand that they are visiting different kinds of people with different cultural background and ethnicity. Nurse needs to accept the fact that every culture was somewhat important and special to themselves.
• Every nurse learn to protect the people's cultural behavior by asking and knowing their cultural values. So it will not hurt or affect the community people.
• Nurse should respect and understand the other cultural beliefs in terms of health care and medication. Every culture has different prospective on the medicine field.
• Nurse may improve the skill by having some exposure on the social media or internet and try to communicate with different type of cultural people and community.

Strategies of Cultural competence;

Cultural preservation; Eg ; Nurse encounter an Muslim client with feeding, but the client responding that she wont eat now
because she is in fasting now, because of Ramadaan. In this time nurse may need to patiently negotiate with client and take further action.

Cultural accommodation ; Eg, A Chinese client uses Green herbs to cure for his medical issue, In this situation nurse may analyse the leaves and allow the client to have it.

Cultural repatterning ; A nurse is taking care of the Indian patient, he had applied some religious powder to this forehead and body, but the nurse asking the patient to remove that kind of powder from the forehead.

Cultural brokering ; Eg, If a nurse facing a client with different culture she may uses some person who is well known of that cultural habits and beliefs and that person will help the nurse to know about the culture.

Barrier in applying cultural strategies are;

• Ignorance among the health care profession.
• Not accepting other culture has a high and valuable one.
• proud about their own culture and treating other culture has low.
• having a thought of supremacy
• Attitude of negligence.