Cultural Awareness And Delivery Of Appropriate Care

The Heritage Assessment Tool is a series of 29 questions designed to determine a patient’s ethnic, cultural, and religious background. The tool gives nurses an understanding of the patient’s traditional health and illness beliefs and practices so that culturally appropriate interventions can be initiated (Flowers, D.L., 2005). The following paper summarizes the assessment results of three culturally different families, and uses those results to show how the nurse would proceed

The Heritage Assessment Tool can be adopted as a dependable tool to gauge, health maintenance, restoration and safeguard of personal, cultural beliefs. The adoption of health assessment tool helps meet the prerequisites of diverse patient populations to offer quality all-inclusive care. The following paper reviews the assessment of three culturally dissimilar families, and demonstrate how a nurse would continue with health promotion centred on the variances in health traditions between the three cultures. The three cultures include Hispanic culture, Native American Indian culture and White American culture. The objectives of this essay are

Culture has more than one definition. It can be defined as the language spoken throughout a group of people or even the beliefs practiced. In the professional field of nursing, nurses are required to do more than administer medication or change bandages on a patient. To be able to fulfill a nurse’s job requirements, a nurse must learn to be culturally competent. Cultural competency in the professional field of nursing means to care and respect the patient whether or not the health care provider is in agreement with the patient’s decisions.

Showing support and respect for cultural health beliefs creates a better interpersonal relationship between patient and physician. When implementing a wellness plan for the patient to follow the physician should take into consideration the beliefs of the patient. Health care providers should seek and obtain knowledge of their patient’s diverse cultures. Obtaining the knowledge of other cultures can be an valuable skill.

People from European heritages maintain their health by proper nutrition, exercise, cleanliness, and faith in God. They believe in amulets and the use of shawls for health protection. They believe in home remedies to restore health (Jarvis 2008). The European family interviewed is from Italy. The family subscribes to a deep Catholic faith; the interviewee attends mass weekly and feels as though her strong religious faith will help them through any of life’s situations- medical, financial, and so on. There is a strong connection to their heritage, they almost exclusively eat Italian dishes and speak Italian at home, and their children understand and speak Italian as well.

Even when access-associated factors, such as insurance and income are considered, minorities continue to have higher rates of disease with shorter life expectancy. They tend to have a poorer quality of health care than non-minorities, increasing the demand and importance of culturally competent health care in the United States. The ability of the healthcare provider to communicate with his or her patient's aides in discouraging barriers to accessing healthcare.

The heritage assessment tool is a checklist used by professionals to gain knowledge of patient’s culture and beliefs prior to initiating care. (Spector, 2000). There are many different cultures in this country, brining different beliefs in health, illness, recovery, death, and life. The heritage assessment tool is an important measure towards better understanding of cultural competency, or recognition of diversity. A person’s culture, beliefs, heritage, and language have a substantial impact both as a patient and a health care provider within the health care system. (Spector, 2009).

Therefore, cultural heritage is the main factor in economic, social, and health promotion of people. Every culture has their own beliefs, values, and perceptions on health and illness. Then, it is imperative for health care providers to assess a cultural heritage on each patient in order to deliver meaningful care for that patient. By using the heritage assessment tool, the three interviewed families revealed some similarities and differences among their health traditions.

As a health care professional, we are faced with caring for patients of different cultural and ethnic background. Researching and learning about the patient’s culture values, beliefs and practices is essential and remarks the ability to provide quality health care for the patient. “Organizations and individuals who understand their clients’ cultural values, beliefs, and practices are in a better position to be coparticipants with their clients in providing culturally acceptable care” (Purnell & Paulanka, 2008, p. 2). After completing the cultural competence checklist, I was able to identify some of my responses to the patient cultural values and belief practices. I will describe a summary of my assessment results, analyze

Cultural Competency can be described as one’s ability to learn about cultures other than their own. It speaks to the value one places on diversity and their desire to foster an open exchange of ideas between dissimilar cultures. While in a perfect world, cultural competency would be of heightened importance in all aspects of life, there are certain industries where cultural competency factor more heavily; one of those being health care. This is especially true in areas with increased diversities of cultures, ethnic groups and a variety of languages.

The United States Census Bureau has predicted that the minorities will become the majority by 2042. Unfortunately, the minorities collectively live below poverty level and are uninsured for healthcare, even though there have been many attempts to improve as mentioned in the above post. Some studies have also proved that the minorities have a tendency to live a shorter life, which in turn means that they have a higher percentage of loss of life, and have little knowledge about health care and available resources.

Campinha- Bacote and colleagues describes the components for cultural competence in healthcare. These includes cultural ; a) knowledge, b) awareness, c) skills, d) encounter and e) desire. Cultural awareness refers to self-examination as well as in-depth exploration of an individual cultural as well as professional background. I am able to explore my own cultural healthcare values and beliefs. This is because understanding another person's does not guarantee that one will become cultural competent. I am now able to use the cultural awareness assessment to assess my personal level of cultural awareness, and to get an insight on the understanding of my cultural values and beliefs

Health care has never been so diverse, not only among patients but also health care providers themselves. In most big metropolitan areas of the US this will only grow and be ever changing. It is imperative that we continue to become culturally aware in our communities to continue to provide competent and safe care. Each individual’s heritage needs to be respected and for that to happen, nurses need to educate themselves with values and beliefs of other cultures and be considerate of a patients heritage. “Cultural heritage is an expression of the ways of living developed by a community and passed on from generation to generation, including customs, practices, places, objects, artistic

Stage 4 focuses on the rationale for providing culturally competent health care to refugee's. Cultural competence relates to a set of behaviours or attitudes that enable the health care system to provide a high quality of equitable care to all groups within society (Germov, 2014). Based on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) a refugee is defined as someone who

Culture and values are standards that influence and shape human behaviors, decision making processes, personal relationships, and status of health and happiness. The United States has become a symbol of a multicultural society representing many different ethnicities and minority groups. As our culture continues to grow rapidly so is the necessity to increase awareness, understanding, and tolerance of these diverse groups. As health care providers we must understand the basic needs of our patients,