Cultural Competence In Patient Care

It is important for policy makers to create services that are culturally sensitive since the United States is a culturally diverse country; moreover, Healthcare professionals needs to be culturally competent so that they can guide policy makers in making sustainable systems for individual communities. “Efforts to improve cultural competence among health care professionals and organizations would contribute to improving the quality of health care for all consumers” (GeorgeTown Health Policy Institutes, 2004, para 31). Language barrier is another culture issue that prevents the community from getting the care that they deserve. “Cultural and language differences and socioeconomic status interact with and contribute to low health literacy, defined as the inability to understand or act on medical/therapeutic instructions” (Shaw, Huebner, Armin, Orzech, & Vivian, 2009, p.1). There should be health policy addressing this issue because of the confusion and inappropriate treatment that many

Cultural competence is defined as possessing the skills and knowledge necessary to appreciate, respect, and work with individuals from different cultures. It is a concept that requires self-awareness, awareness and understanding of cultural differences, and the ability to adapt to clinical skills and practices as needed

Critically analyse one of the main challenges, barriers, and enablers for cultural competence in health care when working in a cross-cultural environment.

The main ideas that Lisa Bourque Bearskin is stating in this article is that nurses need to be more sensitive to cultural care. They need to be aware of the issues in healthcare and strive to remove any barriers for certain groups, such as the first nations, and they need to disrupt any unequal relations in the social, political and historical aspect of healthcare. The way this can be done is by shifting their thoughts from cultural competence to cultural safety by way of relational ethics. Cultural competence is explained as the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that nurses need to use to care for cultural differences. Another framework described cultural competence as going through the stages of cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, cultural skill, cultural encounter, and cultural desire. Cultural competency works very well when making policies in an agency but this view fosters a view of culture that does not encourage nurses to ask questions. (Bearskin, 2011) Cultural Competence causes different cultures to be put in a box, which cannot be done because cultures are constantly changing and every person’s culture is different. Culture is individual. Lisa Bourque Bearskin goes on to say that cultural safety is what nurses should use for ethical practice. In cultural safety, a nurse must strive to improve health care and its access for all people, while recognizing that there are many different cultures that have a right to be recognized. Bourque

Cultural competence in health care describes the ability to provide care to patients with diverse values, beliefs and behaviors, including tailoring health care delivery to meet patients’ social, cultural and linguistic needs. The need for healthcare systems to increase cultural competence and personalize care for ethnic patient minorities should not be ignored. Healthcare systems should promote better understanding and communication between diverse ethnic patients and caregivers. Hospitals should design a system that caters to the needs of all the populations they serve and not just apply a one-size-fits-all approach. Becoming a culturally competent health care organization is a critical component in reducing health care disparities.

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.

The United States is a diverse accumulation of cultural backgrounds which can often set the stage for feelings of confusion, anger, mistrust, and a host of other emotions when dissimilar cultures disagree. Cultural competence in nursing can help eliminate these barriers and provide a platform for nursing to follow in the quest to understand a patient's culture and background. When a nurse takes the time to learn about a given culture prior to providing care, it conveys she respects the patient's right to their beliefs, customs, and culture. It does not necessarily mean the nurse agrees with their practices but

Who is the person the nurse is caring for? Where is that person from? Does this person speak English, or understand what the caregiver is saying? What is this person’s cultural background? What are the health beliefs of this person, what are their illness beliefs and practices? These questions are answered differently depending upon the person and their heritage. As healthcare providers it is important to have a broad knowledge base in regards to different cultures and people’s practices to deliver effective health care. In 2006, the population of

Miscommunication, medication errors, and lack of compliance commonly occur in the healthcare field. These are just a few of the errors that occur due to the patient being from a different culture than the physician or healthcare worker. Those three errors alone have a huge impact on our healthcare today. If we could have a better understanding of other cultures that are different from our own we could have a dramatic decrease in errors and a great increase in healthcare participation. Training must be completed and must be done in more than one way. The first step is to make sure that all physicians and health care workers get the same nationwide training that focuses on improving cultural competence. How this is completed must be done in more than one way (Horwitz, 2001).

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.

After watching the Cultural Competence in Health care video, I learned that there are many different people I will deal with in my career as an advocate for health. One quote I really liked from the video stated, “My diversity is my strength, not my weakness”. I believe this is true because having so many different people of different cultural backgrounds opens up the opportunity for different points of view to develop new ideas. This reminds me of the activity we did in class on our first day. We were asked to simply write down what our thoughts were. What we realized upon getting our sheets back is that when you work with others, they may have an idea you had not thought about. Overall, I think this video is a good representation of the

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.

Unfortunately, the lack of culturally competent healthcare providers such as nurses, leads to negative patient outcomes and low quality healthcare. Culturally competent nurses are required to adequately treat our culturally diverse population. Nurses are frontline patient advocates and education and training in cultural competence is an intervention that will implement positive changes in healthcare delivery in the U.S.

Cultural Competency, widely known as the ability to understand the differences between cultures and how one can assess and effectively respond to each patient’s cultural diversity. Cultural competency is something that can be applied far and wide to many different professions, but its importance is strongly present in the healthcare industry.

Defined as the ability of providers and organizations to effectively deliver health care services that meet the social, cultural and linguistic needs (Georgetown University, 2004) Cultural competence is an ideal that spans across not only healthcare, but also law enforcement. Utilizing the same mindset as the healthcare industry, law enforcement has the dubious task of deciphering how to provide a service meant for all and ensure that the needs of all citizens and businesses are met. According to Terry Cross (1988), culturally competent agencies are characterized by acceptance and respect for difference, continuing self-assessment regarding culture, careful attention to the dynamics of difference, continuous expansion of cultural knowledge and resources, and a variety of adaptations to service models in order to better meet the needs of minority populations. The culturally competent agency works to hire unbiased employees, seeks advice and consultation from the minority community and actively decides what it is and is not capable of providing to minority clients.