Overcoming Cultural Barriers In Diabetes Patients

Establishing effective communication with the patient is a critical factor in promoting patient quality care. Good communication is fundamental when providing safe and effective care at the beside in order to increase the quality of patient care. One of the many communicative barriers that exists between patients and the healthcare team are language barriers. Language barriers are considered an initial problem of translation or code-switching. Individuals who speak different languages require a certain code breaker in order to facilitate effective communication (Gregg & Saha, 2007). Furthermore, language barriers may hinder the quality of patient care and interfere with optimal clinical outcomes. According to Happ et al., 2011, nurses have the unique responsibility to engage in communication with patients and have control over the timing and method of communication. Evidenced based interventions such as communication boards are needed to improve nurses’ communication skills in order to achieve effective communication.

Culture competence is a quality that any nurse should have. The article that I decided to research refers to the impact that language and different cultures have on a patient’s health. It is the duty of health care professionals to attempt to learn about different cultures and to be sensitive to the way patient’s feel about their beliefs. Once the nurse understands a patient’s

Can you imagine the how the healthcare industry would be without language, what seems to be impossible to imagine is the everyday reality of some patients because of their native language. Language is a major contribution to the health disparities that some populations face, because it makes it difficult for some patients to communicate their problems as well as understand the care they provided. Language contributes to the health disparities that some populations face because it creates a barrier between the patient and the care provider, making it difficult for a patient to receive proper care. Language barriers create a communication gap between a patient and a provider, forcing the patient to feel misunderstood and unable to trust his/her provider to properly care for them. I come from a family that speaks more than one language, so I have seen the impact language barriers can have on someone who doesn’t speak fluent English.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D) is the most common form of diabetes (American Diabetes Association, 2012). T2D is so prevalent that it is estimated to be the fifth most common cause of death worldwide (Yates, Jarvis, Troughton, and JaneDavies, 2009, p. 1). T2D manifests when the body is unable to metabolize glucose properly, resulting in elevated blood sugar, debilitating fatigue, and other serious complications such as distal limb amputations, kidney failure, and blindness. The generally accepted causes of T2D include diet, sedentary lifestyle, and obesity.

an American Indian male with diabetes who receives care at a non-tribal clinic. He reports that he does not feel much of a connection with his provider or his clinic, and says that he feels misunderstood when he tells his provider about his traditional healing practices.  He struggles to remember to take his medications and sometimes does not take them because he feels that they don’t work.

Class,  In our first DQ, we discussed the various cultural barriers that we might see on a routine basis; however there are still many more barriers to effective communication.  These might be more associated with physical and psychological barriers.  Here are two real-world questions that we most of us will encounter throughout our health care career regularly... How might a provider communicate more effectively with a person who is hearing impaired? Also, how might a provider communicate more effectively with an adolescent versus an adult?

The diabetes epidemic within this demographic is being combated via multiple channels by a host of characters. The federal government, for one, has been active in addressing this issue. The CDC currently works to reduce diabetes-related health disparities in Native American communities by funding and supporting national organizations to engage and collaborate with local partners in nearly twenty communities (CDC, 2014b). For instance, the CDC provides funding to the Association of American Indian Physicians (AAIP), which works closely with communities in Louisiana, Michigan, and Kansas to create culturally appropriate and long-term diabetes interventions. One intervention in Kansas, the Better Health Cooking Skills Class, teaches community

Anne Fadiman wrote this book to document the conflict between cultural barriers and how they affect medical issues. In this book, Lia Lee is a Hmong child was has epilepsy and battles cultural medical differences. The main struggle in this story is the conflict between the doctors and parents because they cannot seem to get on the same page. While writing the book, Fadiman stated that there was a “clash of cultures”. (Fadiman, preface) Meaning, there are two different sides to the story and the problem has not be solved.

Hispanic Americans culture each have different dietary patterns and food. “The traditional Hispanic American diet is rich in a variety of foods and dishes that represent a blend of pre-Columbian, indigenous Indian, Spanish, French, and more recently, American culture. The Hispanic diet is rich in complex carbohydrates, which are provided mainly by corn and grain products e.g. tortillas, present at almost every meal), beans, rice, and bread) (Smith, 2010).” They diet contains a good amount of protein (beans, eggs, fish, and shellfish, pork, and poultry). Chorizo is a spicy pork sausage that is served with egg for breakfast. Hispanic American favorite fruits and vegetables are tomatoes, squash, sweet potato, avocado, mango, pineapple,

Effective communication with patients is critical to the safety and quality care. From the last two decades ,number of researches has been conducted on the impact of language barrier on health and healthcare. It is observed that language barriers are the main cause of medical errors, complication and adverse event. But due to data limitations ,limited researches on impacts of language barrier has been conducted in Canadian setting. However, the researches conducted on other countries on the impact of language barrier on quality of care is applicable in the Canadian context. Some researches shows that there are several barrier which affect quality of care and patient safety. Now, researches has begun to know the complexity of language, culture, race, health literacy that may affect patient care. Current approaches are moved towards the knowledge of risk of language barrier rather than implementation of effective, evidence informed strategies.

The earliest inhabitants of Mexico are believed to have been hunters who migrated from Asia approximately 18,000 years ago. Over time they built organized civilizations with distinct cultures like the Olmec, Teotihuacan, Mayan, Toltec, Zapotec, Mixtec, and Aztecs. These societies excelled in the fields of art, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, and agriculture. In 1517 the Spanish explorer Francisco Fernández de Córdoba landed on the Yucatán, peninsula and four years later the Spanish Conquistador Hernando Cortéz conquered the Aztec empire. For the next 300 years, Mexico, or New Spain, would remain under colonial rule.

To communicate seems easy enough to most of us. We have been doing this from the moment we were born. We expressed ourselves with grunts, moans, crying, smiling and yelling. We started communicating even before we made words with our nonverbal forms of communication. Communication is important. It allows individuals to share information and messages in the form of ideas and feelings (Giger, 2013). It gives us direction and allows us to interact with others. Can you image getting the entertainment system in parts in the mail with no instructions as to how to put it together? It is essential that we all communicate effectivity in order to ensure the best quality of care. Language barriers threaten the patient safety and overall quality of care of these individuals. By having efficient practices in place it will lower those risks and increase quality care.

The focus in the clinical practice would be to reduce health care disparities and address the barriers that affect the individual’s health care outcomes. The most important strategy to promote health education is to be culturally sensitive, which includes as a clinician to have knowledge with social-cultural, religious, healthcare issues, and remove barriers that impede the individual’s heath care (Zou and Parry 2012). Another strategy to facilitate health education is to remove language barriers. To improve health education with language barriers effectively would be to use a medically trained translator and not a family member. A clinician has to remind themselves that they are there for the patient and their needs. Using a medically trained translator, a clinician can be confident that the patient is receiving all of the information, able to ask and answer questions, and can feel confident that the patient understands all the health information and what would need to be addressed with further education. Trust is another health education barrier. Many African Americans are reluctant to participate in health promotion programs due to mistrust in the health care community (Butler-Ajibade, Booth, and Burwell 2012). As a clinician, to establish trust is an extremely important element to successfully promote health education in the African American community. To remove the trust barrier

In any case, providing competent care to a patient of a different culture must first start with an understanding of the culture itself (Potter & Perry, 2011). Culture is

The cultural group that I would educate is the Hindu culture. I would focus on addressing the adults who suffer from diabetes. I would create the teaching plan to educate their population by first gathering information about their culture. Since I've identified the problem that I want to highlight within their population; which is diabetes, I would then devise a plan to reduce those rates, such as eating healthier meals. I would follow through with the plan of educating them by creating services in their communities to inform their people of the important effects of healthier eating habits as related to diabetes. After taking such action, I would evaluate the effects of those services.