Cultural Implications Of Dealing With Vulnerable Populations

As a registered nurse practicing in the state of California I am responsible for practicing within my states legal regulations and nursing scope of practice. My concern for the welfare of the sick and injured allows me to practice ethical provisions of nursing. These are required if I am to carry out competent and effective nursing care. Nursing encompasses the prevention of illness, the alleviation of suffering, and the protection, promotion, and restoration of health in the care of individuals. Therefore, as health care professionals we must be familiar with the different philosophical forces, ethical principles, theories and values that influence nursing. At the same time, we must be respectful to our patient’s

Indeed, nurses play an indispensable role in connecting patients with a new culture of care and serving as a voice for the socially marginalized. My contribution to the mission of the Nurse Corps Scholarship program in providing care to underserved communities will entail great knowledge base of different medical conditions with the ability to know my patients, their family situations, their cultural identities, social situations, the barriers and challenges they face in dealing with their

In rural Iowa, there are few individuals who are knowledgeable of the Hispanic culture due to the small number of Hispanic individuals that have sought out care in the past. Recently, there has been an influx the number of Hispanic Americans seeking care in this area, making the delivery of culturally sensitive communication and care an important topic. According to DeNisco & Barker (2016), the nature of nursing care encompasses the need to be aware of cultural diversity (p. 581). Meaning that nurses need to strive for cultural competence to reach the societies expectations in the delivery of nursing care (DeNisco & Barker, 2016). We are going to take a look at how nurses can make a few changes that will make providing culturally competent care to the Hispanic population easier in these settings.

Both articles express how important it is to be culturally self-aware and in touch with your personal beliefs, views, and morals. If you aren’t aware of what your cultural beliefs are you won’t be able to provide you patients with the cultural care and respect that they require in their recovery to become healthy again. In addition, the two articles (Newson 2009, Byrson 2012) both talk about how important it is to be open minded with people who may have a different opinions and views on certain things. If you aren’t open to treating you patients in the cultural way that they want to be treated, your patient will feel disrespected and unimportant. Therefore, their health will suffer because of your incompetence to accommodate their cultural needs. A nurse needs to be culturally self-aware, they need to know what their own personal views are first so they can understand that not everyone’s views will be the same. This means they need to be capable of being open and accepting to other people’s cultural wants and needs. By being these two things you will be able to provide people of all cultures with the respect and treatment they

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

An underlining principle that forms all nursing practice is respect for the inherent dignity, worth, unique attributes, and human rights of all individuals. (Jimenez-Lopez, Roales-Nieto, Seco, Preciado, 2016) Nurses are to always treat all patients with dignity. For example, closing doors before you start providing patient care. It’s also essential as a nurse to respect patients regardless of their background, race, culture, value system, or spiritual belief. (Jimenez-Lopez, et al., 2016)

The United States has had an immigration issue for many years that serves some people, practically enslaves others and causes many others to get angry. Of course, this issue concerns illegal immigration and legal Hispanic farm workers. The population who is best served by the influx of workers are the farms in the central valley of California and other areas that use these individuals to harvest crops. The workers in the United States illegally are in constant fear of being discovered, and they are often exploited because of their immigration status. Legal citizens are, in large part, angry with the situation because of the cost incurred by so many people entering the country and not contributing to the tax burden imposed on citizens of the country. The issue for this paper though is what type of healthcare women in this situation are getting, and whether it is sufficient. This paper contends that this population is underserved for many reasons, and this group was chosen for that reason. One solution is to develop a cultural competence by understanding the population's culture, how they see healthcare workers, and to determine what their healthcare needs are.

The face of nursing has evolved and changed since it’s inception. Today’s nurse is faced with cultural, ethical and technological issues that didn’t exist even twenty years ago. As such, nurses have had to continuously evolve to continue to provide the quality, selfless care that patients have always relied on them for, and expected, since the very beginning of nursing. From pediatrics to gerontology, nurses are serving a culturally, religiously and financially diverse population with challenging needs. In the face of this, nursing itself is becoming ever more diverse in it’s culture and skill set, which is helping the profession stay in the race, and continue to advance the practice of nursing.

With the large increase multicultural population in the United States, nurses encounter patients with differences in healthcare beliefs, values and customs. To provide adequate nursing care, nurses must be aware of these differences. They must respect and acknowledge the patient’s culture. To do this, nurses need education on cultural competence to ensure patient satisfaction and better patient outcomes.

As the society acknowledges the importance of human rights and dignity, the issues among the poverty, homeless, violence victims are now more considered. Although there are difference in roles between nurses from acute care, intensive care, and emergency settings nurses, community nurses engage those issues to become advocates for social justice. Health care nurses collaborate to identify strategies for incorporating social justice aims into their work environment (Johnstone, 2011). As a public nurses, there has been many researches to address vulnerability, diversity, health literacy, health care access, health care disparities and issues of particular populations such as ethnic and racial minority health, gay and lesbian health and the health of children, women and older adults (Johnstone, 2011). For example, affordable health care 2010 was implied for equitable delivery of healthcare for all individuals in United States. Although there are pro and cons on success of the system, it was aimed to promote the justice of human need to have least of health care when necessary. Among with the issues of inequality and unfairness of worldwide insurance system, this act was to provide fair access to health care. To achieve the aims of a just, accessible, affordable health care system for all, public health nurses make an effort to engage the professional advocacy.

The Affordable Care Act not only strives or yearns for access to quality healthcare for everyone, but also ethical practices in healthcare. According to the Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, the issue of health care reform brings important ethical issues of justice to the forefront, as individuals, communities, and the legislature struggle with how to provide quality health care for the many without sacrificing the basic rights of even the few. Americans want high quality healthcare, the right to choose and the right to decide who would service their healthcare needs. Americans expect healthcare services to be cost worthy. Most would also want fellow citizens to contribute to some of the costs and

Bekemeier and Butterfield’s article “Unreconciled Inconsistencies: A Critical Review of the Concept of Social Justice in 3 National Nursing Documents,’ highlighted multiple literary discrepancies on the subject of social justice in nursing. These fundamental nursing documents are: Nursing's Social Policy Statement, Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice, and the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements. I find myself agreeing with the viewpoints of Bekemeier and Butterfield. They bring to light many entries where nursing care is focused more in response to an injury or disease process, rather than providing nursing on a larger scale with a preventative connotation. The verbiage in many areas of

care. Nursing care for any individual should not be compromised because of ethnicity, gender, spiritual values, disability, age, economic, social or health status, or any other grounds. Respect for an individual’s needs includes recognition of the individual’s place in a family and the community. For this reason, others should be included in the individual’s care. Respect for an individual’s needs, beliefs and values includes culturally sensitive care, and the need

Stanhope and Lancaster (2008) define vulnerable populations as “those defined at a greater risk for poor health status and health care access”(p.712). The role of a public health nurse in contrast to a vulnerable population is to establish interventions to help break the cycle of vulnerability thus aiding to eliminate health disparities within the population. The term “risk” helps public health nurses establish a person probability of something happening to them. This epidemiological term is used with the triangle of host, agent and environment in contrast to ones health within a population. The author will discuss vulnerability as discovered within a community based on surveying the community and establishing risk and interventions on the

The Theory of Culture Care Diversity and Universality is founded on the principle the compassion is the crux of nursing (Black, 2014, p.277). In order to provide care effectively, one must demonstrate empathy toward his or her patient. Additionally, Leininger’s theory calls for transcultural nursing, which is centered on culture as the basis for care delivery; essentially, it is the provision of culturally competent care (Narayanasamy, 1999). To allow the nurse to assess a patient culturally, Leininger devised the sunrise model, which encompasses multiple traits specific to an individual’s cultural background.