Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.
Purpose
This week’s graded topics relate to the following Course Outcomes (COs).
- CO 1 – Utilize prior knowledge of theories and principles of nursing and related disciplines to explain expected client behaviors, while differentiating between normal findings, variations, and abnormalities. (PO 1)
- CO 2 – Recognize the influence that developmental stages have on physical, psychosocial, cultural, and spiritual functioning. (PO 1)
- CO 3 – Utilize effective communication when performing a health assessment. (PO 3)Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.
The Assignment
This week you have your choice of three discussion topics! Select the one that most interests you and answer the corresponding questions completely.
Remember to reference both the book or lesson, and an outside scholarly source.
Option #1:
You are the nurse assessing an Orthodox Jewish client with peptic ulcer. The client is strictly religious and refuses to eat the food provided at the health care facility.Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.
- Describe how you would further assess and provide care for this client.
- What steps could you take to increase your cultural competence, if you were not familiar with this faith?
Option #2:
You are the nurse caring for a client with Crohn’s disease. The client believes he is being punished by God. The client is spiritually distressed and cannot come to terms with the illness.
- How would you respond to this client?
- What are some identified risk factors for spiritual distress, and recommended interventions?
Option #3:
Describe a time in your clinical nursing practice when you have cared for a client of cultural, religious, or spiritual practices different from your own.Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.
- What were some of the challenges you faced caring for this client?
- What steps did you take (or could you have taken) to ensure the patient received culturally/spiritually competent care?
Sharon Colton
South University
Cultural Competent Nursing Care
Cultural competent nursing care is the expectation in today’s society. As nurses, we need to be mindful of different cultures and their healthcare beliefs. We need to be able to adapt to our patient’s cultural needs in order to provide holistic care to our patients and their families. “Health-care providers must recognize, respect, and integrate clients ‘ cultural beliefs and practices into health prescriptions to eliminate or mitigate health disparities and provide client satisfaction.” (Purnell, 2009, p. 3)
In Columbia, there are many areas that can affect nursing care in this culture. Some of them are language, family organization,
I have learned that although many cultures are different, they all have various degrees of similarities. Being sensitive to different cultures is the key to providing culturally competent care. Many different cultures have strong religious beliefs, like Jewish, Muslims and Catholics. Many cultures have different dietary habits, such as Somali’s eating with right hand only, Jewish people eating a kosher diet, and Hindu’s theory of hot and cold foods. Also, cultures have different customs in regards to death, such as Catholics not accepting organ donation and autopsies, Hindus preferring to die at home with last rites, and Filipinos believing that living wills and advance directives are tempting fate. Understanding these differences allows the nurse to have a broader knowledge base of different cultures. With this increased knowledge, the nurse should be able to provide culturally competent care to the patient, as well as, educate staff in regards to the world’s many different culture’s traditions and …show more content…
As nurses, we should be aware of our own biases and judgments, so that we can be more understanding of other cultures. The key to providing culturally competent care is being sensitive of other cultures, asking appropriate questions and adapting nursing care to provide the best care for the patient and their families.Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.
Introduction
The nursing profession has witnessed a number of emerging trends, which aim at improving service delivery in a contemporary work environment. One of the trends that have emerged in the nursing profession is cultural competency. Cultural competency refers to the ability of an individual to understand and relate well with people from different cultural backgrounds (Dana & Allen, 2008). Cultural competency is a value held in high esteem within the nursing profession.
Cultural competency in nursing involves the cognitive ability, mental attitude, and accomplishments of an individual that enable them to provide care to people from different cultures. Studies have shown that culture plays a crucial role in the development of perceptions that people have regarding health care services. People have different preferences on the kind of medication right for them, depending on their cultural beliefs. Therefore, it is important for nurses to be cognizant of the ethnic background of their patients.Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.
This allows them to provide the right healthcare service (Jeffrey, 2010). Healthcare providers have a responsibility to ensure that they get all the necessary information about the cultural beliefs of the people they serve. They should promote people’s culture through their work by respecting their viewpoints, beliefs, and values.Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.
With the high rate of globalization and technology development experienced in the 21st Century, people are increasingly interacting in a more culturally dynamic environment. Therefore, cultural competency is an essential skill that nurses should have in order to achieve success in the contemporary workplace (Jeffrey, 2010).Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.
Discussion
The concept of cultural competency has been an influential trend in the nursing profession over the last couple of years. Its huge influence on the success of the profession has led to it being part of the curriculum in nursing schools. Studies have shown that the contemporary healthcare work environment is very dynamic, diverse, and demand for nurses. One of the main contributing factors to this phenomenon has been a highly multicultural society (Anderson, 2008).Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.
Nurses have to increase their knowledge of various cultures, develop the right attitude, and advance the skills in order to have better service delivery. Nurses should have enough knowledge about the culture of the people in the areas they work in. Their main concern should be to establish the impact of people’s beliefs and practices on healthcare services. It is also important for nurses to have the right attitude towards the cultural beliefs and practices of people.Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.
They should be conscious of any preconceptions and partialities they develop regarding the culture of people in an area (Dana & Allen, 2008). Nurses should avoid taking positions of patients based on motivations driven by conventional conceptions about their culture.
Nurses should also ensure that they advance essential abilities such as communication skills as a way of respecting the culture of people in the area they work in. For example, they can try to learn the basic elements of the people’s language for the sake of communicating with patients who do not comprehend other languages (Jeffrey, 2010). Cultural competency in the nursing profession also applies as an ethical obligation owing to the fact that a nurse acts as an advocate for people’s welfare.Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.
The ethical code of conduct in the nursing profession requires all healthcare providers to respect the identity of their patients. This is important because the culture has a very crucial role to play in health care provision. Important cultural elements, such as gender roles and traditional health care practices, influence how people from a certain culture perceive contemporary services (Anderson, 2008).Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.
Building a culturally competent health care workplace
Building a culturally competent workforce is a challenge for organizational leaders. The reason for this is the delicate nature of organizational cultures when exposed to change. Cultural competency in the workplace requires slight changes in the organizational culture of health care organizations (Dana & Allen, 2008).Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.
Organizational culture is very sensitive to changes, especially those influenced by external forces. Organizational leaders have to deal with a number of challenges. First, people often demonstrate their unwillingness to recognize and respect differences in opinions or beliefs. Second, people also develop partialities that prevent objective consideration of issues and situations to the favor of others (Starr, 2008). This leaves certain people feeling isolated and lose their attachment towards achieving a certain shared goal.Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.
These challenges make it hard for health care organizations to show their respect for the identity of the people they serve. However, health care organizations should strive to have a culturally competent workforce because it helps to foster good relations between nurses and their patients (Starr, 2008).Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.
Studies have shown that cultural competency is one of the most desirable qualities among nurses in contemporary health care provision. Health care workforces are also having a higher level of cultural diversity, and nurses have to have the right cultural aptitude in order to develop a formidable health care team. When nurses learn to respect the identities of their colleagues, doing the same for the people they serve will not be a challenge to them (Starr, 2008).Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.
Conclusion
Culture represents the identity of people because it shows the knowledge and values shared by a society. The contemporary health care work environment entails nurses working in culturally diverse workplaces and communities.Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.
This has increased the demand for culturally competent health care professionals who have the ability to provide services to people with different cultural backgrounds. It entails having knowledge of various cultures, developing the right attitude, and advancing individual competences. As the rate of globalization continues to rise, nurses have to ensure that they increase their competency levels.Providing Culturally Competent Nursing Care Essay.