Culturally Competent Care In Nursing

“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)

The nursing profession has a long history of assessing and placing patient needs first when giving care. The tenets of nursing practice include meeting those needs using individualized care by collaborating with the patient, family, and health care team members. (American Nurses Association, 2010). The concept of transcultural nursing aligns with these tenets because it calls on nurses to provide patient-centered care by taking into account the patient’s background, beliefs, culture and values. In this paper, I will identify the factors that made it necessary to develop the transcultural nursing theory, describe the meaning of diversity and its relationship to the field of nursing, and explain three ways that I provide culturally sensitive care to my patients.

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 term culture is defined as “the thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions of racial, ethnic, religious, or social groups” (Potter & Perry, 2013). With the increase of culturally diverse populations in the United States, it is important for nurses to practice cultural competence. Cultural competence is the ability to acquire specific behaviors, skills, attitudes, and policies in a system that permits “effective work in a cross-cultural setting” (OMH, 2013). Being culturally competent is essential because nurses who acknowledges and respects a patient’s health beliefs and practices are more likely to have positive health outcomes (OMH, 2012). Every culture has certain views and attitudes concerning

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

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

In order to deliver nursing care to different cultures, nurses are expected to understand and provide culturally competent health care to diverse individuals. Culturally competent care is tailored to the specific needs of each client, while incorporating the individual’s beliefs and values (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2006, p. 90). By being culturally competent, nurses are able to help improve health outcomes by using cultural knowledge and specific skills in selecting interventions that are specific to each client (Stanhope & Lancaster). Therefore, nurses “should perform a cultural assessment on every client with whom they interact with” (Stanhope &

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.

the undeniably assorted, multicultural population in the United States is putting forth new difficulties in the arrangement of cultural care by nurses in general. An immediate relationship exists between a patients way of life and their well being; of the numerous factors known to impact health beliefs and practices, culture is a standout amongst the most compelling. In the event that the arrangement of the most ideal care to all patients is the objective, nurses must have aptitude and ability in the conveyance of culturally proper and cultivation equipped nursing care. Each nurse must play a dynamic part in getting a data base whereupon to build up a social competency. The capacity to convey nursing care that will permit powerful communications

During the semester, I was successful at completing the objective, of collaborating with peers, other professionals and families plan and implement culturally competent nursing care to childbearing families. I improved my skill of communicating with patients whose culture was different than mine; I did this by picking patients with a unique culture. For example, I would pick to work with a patient that didn’t speak the same language as me. This helped me with communicating with different groups and cultures. For example, if a mother or their family member spoke a different language than me, I wouldn’t not joke around with them as they have a different culture, and my joke may be translated differently or negatively. Unfortunately, that barrier

In the world the are many kind of cultures and for the United States of America that means a mix of such cultures in the big cities. Nursing wise this means that when caring for a patient, a nurse has a great possibility the patient will not share same culture. At times, this is not the easiest task for a nurse. Maybe the nurse is trying the best but a cultural misunderstanding can uncomfortable for the patient and the nurse. The Culturally Competent Nursing Care is use to seal some gaps left by the cultural differences. This consist of an electronic learning program that helps the nurse with cultural and linguistically issues between the nurse and the patient (Ozkara San, 2015). I live in Miami and to me this program is an excellent idea because

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

The main question that this article set out to answer was, “What is transcultural nursing?”, and the definition that was given for this topic was, “a legitimate area of study, research and practice that focuses on  culturally based care beliefs, values, and practices to help cultures or subcultures maintain or regain their health”.  This is a newer addition to the healthcare or nursing field, and it has remained one of the most challenging aspects of the nursing world to conquer as the world that we live in becomes globally multicultural. The article also brought up that, transcultural nursing also means, that as a nurse you can provide culturally congruent care for anyone that may need it. Being able to provide this care means that everyone