The Giger And Davidhizar Transcultural Model

Theories of transcultural nursing with established clinical approaches to clients were founded in the mid-1960s and are an essential aspect of healthcare today. The ever-increasing multicultural population in the United States poses a significant challenge to nurses providing individualized and holistic care to their patients. Accurate assessments identify factors that define transcultural nursing and analyze methods to promote culturally competent nursing care.” (Maier-Lorentz, 2008)

The intercultural challenges I am currently facing is my CQ knowledge. I am having challenges because I cannot find common ground when working with a variety of cultures. For example, I work as a customer service representative in a call center and I’m around a variety of cultures. I find it very hard to understand everyone’s triggers, their dislikes, and likes, and why they behave or act a certain way with different situations. I try to ask questions to grasp an understanding of their behaviors, and still find it quite challenging to reach common ground. I try to be very open-minded, however, it always causes me to become frustrated.

Communication is one of the basic survival skills of human and also a fundamental part of nursing. Effective communication would help to promote a positive nurse-client relationship which is crucial for the delivery of quality nursing care (Sheppard, 1993; McCabe 2003).

Communication is usually taken for granted in our every day to day living as we use it without thought. Good communication skills are needed in the workplace and especially with nursing staff to and from patients when giving first hand care. Good or bad communication can make there experience within the health care setting a positive or negative one and can leave a lasting impression. A good health care provider can use there communication skills to put a patient at ease with a few comforting words or gestures, a lack of positive communication in the health care setting could leave the patient feeling neglected, ignored and not valued as a patient.

Communication involves information being sent, received and decoded between two or more people (Balzer-Riley 2008) and involves the use of a number of communication skills; which in a nursing context generally focuses on listening and giving information to patients (Weller 2002). This process of sending and receiving messages has been described as both simple and complex (Rosengren 2000 in McCabe 2006, p.4). It is a process which is continually utilised by nurses to convey and receive information from the patient, co-workers, others they come into contact with and the patient’s family.

Listening and attending, empathy, information giving and support in the context of a nurse-patient relationship are identified as essential communication skills in nursing (Timmins, 2007).

Communication is any form of expressing and receiving of messages between individuals. The importance of Communication in the nursing profession is to maintain high quality care for the patient but also maintain effective collaboration between professionals. Boykins, D (2014) states that the “registered nurse is expected to communicate in various formats and in all areas of practice”. Various formats include speaking to patients and coworkers as well as utilizing appropriate protocols and systems to effectively communicate regards to patient’s status.

As a nurse, communication is an essential and important factor to building a therapeutic relationship between a nurse and patient as it is the difference between average and excellent nursing care, as it helps maintain a good quality of life and allows nurses’ and patients to interact and provide comfort when needed. The importance of good communication can become apparent with patients especially when they are in the hospital, as it helps the nurses build a positive relationship with patients and helps overcome barriers including physical, psychological and social. A therapeutic relationship is built on many factors which include both verbal and non-verbal communication which helps maintains the relationship and strengthens it due to the positive impact it has not only on the patient’s experience but also the nurse’s.

In nursing profession, communication is one of the vital interprofessional collaboration competencies. A slack in communication gap will affect effective teamwork in providing efficient patient care delivery. Without integrated cooperation and effective communication, there will be a delinquency in the healthcare system, resulting in

The profession of nursing is more than caring for the physiological health of an individual. It also includes caring for their spiritual, mental, and overall wellbeing. Nurses, and all health care workers, need to take into consideration a patient’s cultural preference in order to maintain their spiritual well-being. This paper will address Native American cultural considerations relating to end of life using the Giger and Davidhizar assessment model as explained in chapter 4 of Sagar (2012) Transcultural Nursing Theory and Models: Application in Nursing Education Practice, and Administration. It will overview the assessment model, then apply it to death in the Native American culture as well as present nursing implications.

The development of the Giger and Davidhizar Transcultural Assessment Model (GDTAM) came about because of nursing students’ need to provide culturally diverse care for patients. The model acknowledges that each culture is individually unique and assesses them according to six phenomena: communication, space, social organization, time, environmental control, and biological variations. In this model “nurses must use transcultural nursing knowledge as a skill and an art to provide care to diverse populations in a culturally appropriate and competent manner” (Sagar, 2012, p. 57). It goes on to discuss how the model sees cultural competence as “a dynamic process implemented by an individual or health care agency by using significant interventions based on the client’s ‘cultural

Time is an important aspect of communication. (Giger Newman & Davidhizar, 2002) Time is important to individuals and cultural beliefs. For example, there are cultural groups who pray in a certain time of day, so as a nurse you have to be aware and respect those times. Cultural groups may be past, present, or future oriented. (Giger Newman &

Throughout this paper I will be pulling information from the Giger and Davidhizar Transcultural Assessment Model. It is pertinent for health care workers to be familiar with this model because of the growing affects that culture has on a patient’s view of disease prevention and health restoration. This model focuses on six cultural phenomena: communication, time, space, social organization, environmental control, and biological variations. It is important for nurses to utilize this tool while performing assessments on patients because of the substantial effects that each one has on a patient’s perspective. Every person is unique and knowing that no one perspective is universal will aid the nurse in treating each patient with culturally competent care.

Nurses tend to spend more time with patients than any other member of the health care team. As a person that spends a lot of time with each patient, he or she is a communicator for the patients in view of the fact that they interact with all roles within the healthcare system. Ms. Jennings states that “As a communicator, the nurse understands that effective communication

Nurses must assess a patient’s communication needs with respect to their age, gender, culture, developmental status and be able to modify their care related to these needs. This also is a consideration when communicating with those around us daily.