Cultural Safety And Patient Centred Care

Person centred care could be defined as focusing on a person’s individual needs, wants, wishes and where they see their target goal. Person centred care also takes into account delivering person centred care to the patients family and carers, as well as the multidisciplinary team that is working together to provide care. The service user is the most important person in decision making for their health care and the nursing process. (Draper et al 2013). Person centred care reminds nurses and care staff that they are caring for the service user, their families and care staff providing the care, this allows the patient power in decision making towards their health and wellbeing. (Pope, 2011)

Cultural safety and patient centred care are terms commonly used in the training of health care professionals. Each term focuses on best practice techniques while promoting a holistic manner of care for patients. As a concept, it enhances the professional and ethical role of health practitioners. Cultural safety and patient centred care are aspects which are crucial for health professionals who strive to deliver the highest level of quality care to all patients (Nguyen, 2008). This essay will analyse and demonstrate that cultural safety is patient centred care by using examples from practice. Through this it will discuss professional standards, science, health policies and health models.

By making sure all your practices as a nurse are culturally safe, you will know that you are treating every patient that comes under your care with the respect and standard of care that they require as an individual with their own beliefs. As a nurse, you need to be open minded and open to accepting cultures that may be different to you own so you do not compromise the care of the health consumer, and therefore affect the therapeutic relationship you need to have with the patient to care for them effectively. This is an essential skill that all nurses need to use in every practice they take part

Practicing cultural safety requires nurses to have undertaken personal reflection of their own cultural identity. This enables them to recognise the impact that their personal culture has on their professional practice (Cox & Taua, 2013). This personal reflection should allow the nurse to provide effective care to an individual or family from a different culture (Cox & Taua, 2013). In this essay I will reflect upon two of my own cultural groupings, discuss the concept of “other”, the relevance of cultural safety to nursing practice and how I might care for someone who is culturally different from myself.

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 safety is a concept that is integral to providing best care to patients in nursing practice. The CRNBC defines cultural safety as a process requiring RNs to reflect on their cultural identity, and develop their practice in a way that allows them to affirm the culture of their patients; cultural unsafety can be defined as any actions which demean, diminish, or disempower the cultural identity and well-being of people; this also addresses the dynamics of the power relationship between the Health Care Provider and the patient (p17). Although an environment of cultural safety is a standard that we are held to as nurses, this ideal is not always reached. In this paper I will discuss one such incidence, as well as some of the changes that will assist myself as a nurse, as well as others members of the healthcare team to create an environment of cultural safety.

The outcome of cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity is cultural safety (Berg, 2010). In practicing cultural safety, it is not really expected that health care workers will know all cultures; it is acknowledging and respecting people regardless of their differences and beliefs (Hughes & Farrow, 2006). Moreover, nurses and other health professionals create cultural safe practice when the patients feel safe, respected and understood (Skellet, 2012), as well as if there is a shared understanding and acknowledgement of the unique identity and diversity. Health workers should always consider the cultural and historical background of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, because practicing cultural safety is significant to

Person-centred practice should enable service users to have choice and control regarding all aspects of their care. The service should be organised in a way that is tailored to meet all service user's individual needs including ; physical, emotional, spiritual, religious and cultural needs. Person-centred care should be needs-led, with certain values being required to ensure that individuals are empowered. This includes: Recognising the service user as the main person Respecting the individual as their own person

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.

Person-centred care has been used frequently in various healthcare literatures and has been used as a guideline tool to help in the drawing up of several policies in different countries in the world (DH, 2005; EU, 2005; Norwegian Ministry of Social and Health Affairs, 1999.), but there is no conspicuous definition of person centred-care; moreover, Beresford (2011) reiterated this by suggesting that very little effort has been committed into providing a universal and standardised definition for this approach to care provision. On the other hand, according to the NHS Education Scotland (2013), person-centred care is collectively using the individualised personal preferences, values and needs of a client as a guideline to treat them as individuals, respect their dignity, creating a favourable environment to foster trust and understanding, and enhance healthy relationships that will aid in their healing. In addition, the Health and Care Professions Council (2013, pp 7) mandates that health professionals must "understand the need to respect and uphold the rights, dignity, values,

Traditionally, health care was grounded on a paternalistic model where healthcare professionals were viewed as the experts in the field and directed decisions for patient, and patients were passive recipients of care (Gluyas, 2015; Mazurenko et al., 2015). In recent decades, the worldwide recognition of individual patients’ needs and preferences as an important aspect of high-quality healthcare that is responsive to the patient, has stemmed the concept of patient-centred care (Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care [ACSQHC], 2011).

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

Cultural safety wasn’t an area of focus until the late 1900’s, according to the National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health. Cultural safety focuses on building an environment where health care professionals respect all cultures, beliefs and practice. Cultural safety’s focus is that no one will be treated unfairly or discriminated against because of their identity of who they are and what culture they come from. We as potential workers in the health care system need to understand the concept of cultural safety and be aware of cultural differences that we will face. Living in a country with such ethnic diversity, nurses of Canada need to understand the matter of cultural safety, so patients feel they are accepted no matter their cultural

This encounter referred to as biculturalism, is an important aspect of cultural safety. This means that the interaction between a nurse and a patient is always considered bicultural as this involves the nurse’s culture and that of the patient’s. In this contact there is hidden power structure and a dominant culture (Henderson, 2003; Jarvis, 2012; Papps & Ramsden, 1996). As stated earlier, in New Zealand the colonisation British enabled them to dominate over all aspects of New Zealand’s way of life and culture, hence in the health care setting, the non-Maori culture prevails. As a culturally safe practice, nurses should learn to respect and acknowledge the culture of the care recipient whether it similar or different from them. Recipients of cares should be encouraged to participate and utilize their culture in managing their health and treatment (Papps & Ramsden, 1996). The nurse’s self awareness of one’s culture while acknowledging and respecting another’s is a fundamental requirement in order to practice cultural safety in nursing (Papps & Ramsden, 1996; Polaschek, 1998; Robinson et al., 1996).