Question

Consider your own diverse cultural background. How does it affect the nursing care you provide?

Answer 1

Culture has a significant influence in health-related beliefs and practices beliefs, thoughts, and priorities in the health-seeking behaviors of different patient populations; it reflects the nursing profession’s contract with society and our responsibility to act according to a strong code of ethics, i.e., to be aware of our own attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, and priorities in providing care to individual patients, families, communities, and populations.

Culture has a significant influence in health-related beliefs and practices

Factors such as language, geography, socioeconomics, gender, and education can play a large role in determining the decisions patients make about medical care, both for themselves and their families.

nurses who lack a firm grasp of cultural differences can experience stress and frustration when working with culturally diverse patients and their families. To better prepare for these situations, nurses follow a cultural competence model to identify their own cultural health care beliefs, gain knowledge and skills about caring for different cultural groups, and engage with diverse patients to practice their skills on an ongoing basis. These actions can reduce risks to patients by opening lines of communication, which can reduce medical errors and make it easier for providers to identify early indications of disease.

Increasing the cultural diversity of the nursing workforce begins in programs that educate the health care professionals of the future. Earning an advanced degree, such as a Doctor of Nursing Practice, can prepare nurses to provide equitable, inclusive care that promotes a healthier, less stressful experience for patients and their families.

My experience in care delivery to culturally diverse families is demanding and challenging because it imprints a constant tension among barriers, cultural manifestations and the ethical responsibility of care, incipiently revealing elements of cultural competency. The omission of information in the participants' reports in the studies represents a limitation. The findings offer a baseline for professionals and organizations to focus their intervention efforts on the continuing barriers in care delivery to culturally diverse families and strengthens the need for cultural competency training for nurses.

the experience of nurses in care delivery to culturally diverse families is demanding and challenging because it imprints a constant tension among barriers, cultural manifestations and the ethical responsibility of care, incipiently revealing elements of cultural competency. The omission of information in the participants' reports in the studies represents a limitation. The findings offer a baseline for professionals and organizations to focus their intervention efforts on the continuing barriers in care delivery to culturally diverse families and strengthens the need for cultural competency training for nurses.

Caregivers are expected to be aware of their own cultural identifications in order to control their personal biases that interfere with the therapeutic relationship. Self-awareness involves not only examining one’s culture but also examining perceptions and assumptions about the client’s culture.” Developing this self-awareness can bring into view the caregivers biases or culturally-imposed beliefs. It can also shed light on oppression, racism, discrimination, and stereotyping and how these affect nurses personally and their work.

a nurse might learn that a patient participates in folk medicine, which incorporates certain unfamiliar healing rituals, or promotes the ingestion of an array of plant-based concoctions as mixed and prescribed by a healer. Without examining his/her own beliefs, the nurse might judge those practices as primitive or scientifically bogus without having a clue about the cultural or symbolic meaning. Meanwhile, the following Sunday that nurse may head to a church service donning a crucifix around her neck—a violent death symbol to the casual observer—where she recites strange, nonsensical liturgy back to a man dressed in a robe and consumes a little cracker and grape juice or wine and calls it “the body and blood of her savior.”