Question

What are the different approaches that you can use to develop cultural competence? Which approach best resonates with nursing and why?

Answer 1

Cultural competence refers to the character which is accustomed by an individual to work and deal with different people who possess different cultural practices and social backgrounds.

An individual is said to be culturally competent when he or she is efficiently able to deal with the people of different culture, ethnicity, background etc.

There are mainly 7 approaches which will help us to develop cultural competence. They are as follows:

- we should be able to identify that the culture is or exceeds the people's skin colour: for example if a dark skin coloured person is seen he is considered as black or African American but he will call himself as Jamaican or some Indians or somemay call themselves as whites.

- we should try to identify and find out all the patient's background be it cultural, race or ethnicity or language or age, so that we will be able to behave and deal with them in their own manners and try to adapt and respect their beliefs.

- we should be able to identify our cultural effectiveness hence if we do treat a patient wit one cultural background we will be able to deal with the people of those cultural groups.

- we should try to make the patient fell that they are at their home.

- we should be able to diagnose the culturally sensitive diagnosis and evaluate it in a proper manner for example a black male can be overly diagnosed with some disease conditions such as schizophrenia etc.

- we should be able to obtain patient's preferences and expectations for example a group of people may think that the modern medications may not be as effective than traditional to heal them or others might think that the medicines will magically heal all the conditions.

- we should be able to understand and identify our cultural beliefs and values.

All the approaches mentioned above best resonates the nursing because these not only imphasizes on the patient's ethical and cultural values but also the caregivers cultural values. These states that as being a nurse we should properly identify and understand a patient's cultural preferences and patient's cultural beliefs.