Cultural Diversity And It Influence On Nursing Practice

“Health is influenced by culture and beliefs” (NRS-429V, 2011, p. 1). In order for the nurse to properly care for the patient, she must know and understand the patient’s culture. “Cultural care is a comprehensive model that includes the assessment of a client’s cultural needs, beliefs, and health care practices” (NRS-429V, 2011, p. 1). It is not enough to just know where the patient lives or where he came from. The nurse must embrace the concept of cultural competence and cultural awareness. This requires not only the awareness of the cultural beliefs and values of their patients, but also

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)

Leininger (1988) defined nursing as a transcultural phenomenon requiring knowledge of different cultures to provide care that is congruent with the clients’ life ways, social structure, and environmental context. This definition from the founder of transcultural care would support applying a cultural sensitive nursing care in the clinical setting, and highly linked to her definition of transcultural nursing as a legitimate and formal area of study focused on culturally based care beliefs, values, and practices to help cultures or subcultures maintain or regain their health (wellbeing) and face disabilities or death in culturally congruent and beneficial caring ways (Leininger, 1970, 1978, 1995). Moreover Leininger summarized the process of applying transcultural care as providing care that fits with cultural beliefs and life ways. From a professional perspective, it refers to the use of emic (local cultural knowledge and life ways) in meaningful and tailored ways that fit with etic (largely professional outsiders’ knowledge), in other words care should be individualized according to patient’s culture to promote holistic and effective nursing care.

Health in all cultures is an important aspect of life. A person’s cultural background, religion and/or beliefs, greatly influences a person’s health and their response to medical care (Spector, 2004). These diverse cultures guide decisions made in daily life; what food eaten, living arrangements made, medications taken and medical advice listened to. A nurse must be knowledgeable and respectful of these diverse cultures and understand their importance when providing care. This understanding helps to build a strong nurse/patient relationship, increasing patient compliance, which ensures positive outcomes are met. Patients who are satisfied

The practice of nursing in today’s multicultural societies calls for nurses to identify and meet the cultural needs of diverse groups of people; to understand the social and cultural reality of the client, family, and community; to develop expertise in the implementation of culturally acceptable strategies for the provision of nursing care, and to identify and use appropriate resources for health teaching that is acceptable to the client. Undeniably, this cultural diversity necessitates that the care provided be compatible with the needs of the culturally diverse population. Madeleine Leininger is recognized worldwide as the founder of transcultural nursing,

Patients come from many different multicultural groups which means they do not look like, talk like, feel like, and respond like the nurses who are providing them with care. Helping nurses to become culturally sensitive to their patient’s diversity may be beneficial in producing positive patients’ outcomes. There is a strong connection between nurses being knowledgeable about a person’s culture and their ability to provide quality, competent patient care (Vogel, 2016). Nurses must come to understand the real lived experience of the patients that they are taking care of. Knowledge about cultural diversity within the health care field is essential for registered nurses in caring for patients. A culturally competent nurse must develop cultural sensitivity. Each patient must be assessed individually; no cultural assumptions should be made about a patient's beliefs or health practices. Nurses are faced with a challenge to provide individualized and holistic care for an ever increasing multicultural population. Vogel (2016) noted that understanding patients' cultural differences, their values, traditions, life styles, customs, and history are paramount in eliminating health care disparities and providing high-quality patient care. Moss, Seifert, and O'sullivan (2016) reported that nurses are able to provide effective and appropriate care when a patient's cultural practice is understood. It is important for nurses to understand the cultural diversity of

Cultural competence can be defined as using the ability of one’s awareness, attitude, knowledge and skill to effectively interact with a patient’s many cultural differences. Madeline Leininger, a pioneer on transcultural nursing describes it this way; “a formal area of study and practice focused on comparative human-care differences and similarities of the beliefs, values and patterned lifeways of cultures to provide culturally congruent, meaningful, and beneficial health care to people” (Barker, 2009, p. 498). The importance of cultural diversity in healthcare allows for the delivery of appropriate cultural autonomy. Showing respect for others will lead to trust between nurse and

To be a successful culturally competent nurse, nurses should assume attitudes to promote transcultural care. Nurses need to be aware of their patient’s cultural differences - taking time to understand and value patient’s cultural needs and perspectives. Nurses should show respect and concern for patients. Nurses should also be empathic with their patients.

I consider myself to be a fairly traditional American white woman, with non-denominational Christian beliefs. My ethnicity is sort of a mixture of Irish, German, Native American and a few others, but my main cultural background is traditional American. I do not put a lot of emphasis on my ethnicity, because in my opinion and the opinion of many others as well, Caucasian American can be race and ethnicity. I celebrate traditional American holidays such as Christmas, Independence Day and Thanksgiving. I do eat traditional American foods, but I also love ethnic foods of all kinds. According to McKinney, James, Murray, Nelson and Ashwill (2013), “Belief in Jesus Christ as the son of God and the Messiah comprises the central core of Christianity” and “Study of biblical scripture; practicing faith, good works, and sacramental rites (e.g., baptism, communion, and others); and prayer are common among most Christian faiths” (p.44). I am non-denominational; however, I do believe this statement sums up the main core of my beliefs. I pray, I have been baptized, I believe in good deeds, and attending church. The only difference is that I do not believe that you must attend church or partake in communion to have a relationship with God; I believe that relationship is rather personal. Now in terms of American culture in the healthcare setting, Euromed Info Online indicates that Western industrialized societies such as the United States, which

Transcultural nursing theory by Madeleine Leininger has general perspectives to the nurse, patient, environment, health, illness, and wellness. According to the caregivers, transcultural nursing theory by Madeleine Leininger is one of the most effective philosophies on health care. It is a theory commonly used by nearly all health facilities worldwide. Most nurses state that transcultural philosophy has had positive effect patient care (George, 2011). The philosophy focuses more on cultural competency, therefore, increasing efficacy of nursing. Increased nurse efficacy resulted from learning cultural beliefs and values of the patients.

Transcultural nursing refers to “being aware of the patients cultural health beliefs and values and incorporating these into the agreed care plan with the patients.” (Nurse dictionary). As part of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Council code of conduct, all nurses need to be culturally respected of all patients especially those of non speaking English backgrounds or culturally linguistic diverse backgrounds. “This code of professional

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

By establishing a transcultural nursing environment, knowledge and practices will lead to cultural competence (Larson,

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the eight reasons why transcultural nursing (TCN) is a necessary specialty, according to Dr. Madeleine Leininger. Dr. Madeleine Leininger was a pioneer in this field of nursing. I will define the meaning of cultural diversity and relate it to nursing practice. I will explain three ways that I provide culturally sensitive care to my patients. I work in an outpatient obstetrics and gynecology office, where we see many different cultures.

While pursuing a doctorate in anthropology, Madeleine Leininger examined how cultures were like one another, as well as, the differences in how cultural care was perceived and expressed by people all over the world (Andrews & Boyle, 2016). The words transcultural nursing was used by Leininger to describe the combination of nursing practice and anthropology (Andrews & Boyle, 2016). From her studies, Leininger discovered eight factors that created challenges in society and health care, which impacted her reason for developing the framework of transcultural nursing. The first factor that she identified was how the movement of people not only within the same country but also between countries had risen (Andrews & Boyle, 2016). As one might expect, with this increase of different cultures moving