The Importance Of Cultural Diversity Nursing

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.

al. (1998); Duffy, (2001) & Leininger, (2002), today nurses are becoming more and more receptive and knowledgeable on cultural differences and they acknowledge and respond to the differences in cultural. Many authors had stated that, it is crucial for nurses to gain knowledge in cultural differences in order for them to deliver the best care for individual from divers cultural (Ryan, et. al. 2000). To achieve holistic care, nurses need to sensitive and aware of the cultural differences. Every individual do have many differences and different cultures and they do have different forms of demands in regards to health. It is believed that, everyone does have the rights to express their own cultural beliefs and values freely (Campinha-Bacote,

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

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.

Teaching and learning methodologies, principals, styles or approaches are perhaps the most challenging for nurses. Not only are nurses diverse in culture, sex, age, socioeconomic and religion, we are also part of a discipline that is diverse in practice. It is necessary to acknowledge our own beliefs, biases as it relates to other culture groups so that we don’t unintentionally create barriers to learning.

In an article written by Drevdahl, Canales, and Dorcy, the authors suggest that although the idea of cultural competence is impactful in nursing, the ability of nurses to move from the theory of cultural competence to actually putting it into practice has been difficult (2008, p. 16). According to the 2011 National Healthcare Disparities Report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), racial and ethnic minorities usually do not have adequate access to healthcare and more often receive a poor quality of care (2012). The end goal of cultural competence is to enable the health care system, and those employed in healthcare, to deliver high quality care to all individuals regardless of their race, ethnicity, culture, or language background, and therefore reducing health

Increasing the number of culturally diverse nursing faculty can be a way to offer diverse role models to the nursing students of cultural minority. In addition, having nursing faculty of another race or ethnicity can help promote and interpret cultural knowledge into the current mainstream Anglo-culture-based curriculum taught in nursing schools today A3. It is suggested that this dominantly white cultured curriculum puts higher demands on students of an ethnic race, and incorporating culturally diverse learning styles can benefit all of the nursing students A3. As an example, incorporating into the nursing curriculum as well as into healthcare practice the emic and etic viewpoints of patients of the minority can be used as a way to see through a more culturally diverse lens

Some people may not consider Cultural Diversity as a necessity for their careers or daily life, but it’s crucial to be able to identify and implement cultural competence and understanding. As a nurse, the need for Cultural competence is almost to be used as second nature. Being able to be empathetic and understanding is one of the several qualities in working in a health care field. Sometimes personalities, cultural and moral differences could effect the nurse’s care for the patient. Diversity is defined as the state of having people who are different races or who have different cultures in a group or organization (Merriam-Webster, 2014).

Increasing nurses’ degree of cultural competence begins with baccalaureate nursing education and curriculum. Long (2012) infers that despite nursing schools’ inclusion of cultural diversity content in coursework, the curriculum highlights theory and knowledge without emphasizing the need to develop culturally sensitive skills in nursing practice. Cultural knowledge is only one of the steps involved in enhancing student nurses’ cultural competence. It is essential for baccalaureate nursing students to also exercise self-awareness of cultural values, beliefs, and personal prejudices through multiple learning experiences, which requires a great amount of time, training, and self-reflection (Long, 2012). In addition to traditional lecture presentations,

Ethnically diversity nursing work force has positive outcome in nursing profession. Because of this the hospital need to provide opportunity to teach their nursing staff to acquire knowledge and skills on handing diversity. Nurses also need to be update themselves in order to deliver diversity nursing care. Ethnically diverse nursing care will give opportunity to obtain equal and qualitative treatment for the

The practice of nursing today demands that the nurse identify and meet the cultural needs of diverse groups, understand the social and cultural reality of the client, family, and community, develop expertise to implement culturally acceptable strategies to provide nursing care, and identify and use resources acceptable to the client (Andrews & Boyle, 2002). A culturally competent care is an essential element of the 21st century for those who are responsible for providing health care in transcultural societies (Papadopoulos, 2006). Functioning successfully within different cultures can be a struggle for many professionals and, as the world changes, it's become clear that dealing with other cultures, both domestic and international, requires

Cultural diversity plays an extremely vital role in nursing education and research and in the workforce. Culture can be defined as characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, defined by everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts. As a nurse, understanding that not all patients are the same and that they can express different cultures shows that the nurses have an understanding and compassion of the patients’ differences. Cultural diversity in nursing promotes the best quality care and the most efficient care for a patient—which encourages satisfaction and emotional wellbeing. Nurses in the United States are caring for a progressively more diverse population. In 2008, ethnic and racial minority groups accounted for about one third of the United States population (Ayoola, 2013). As a nurse, nursing educator, or nursing student understanding and learning about other cultures is one of the fundamentals in terms of the best possible care for a patient—which is essentially the primary focus. This paper will discuss the main points of why having and understanding diversity in nursing is such a key factor in ensuring quality care. It will also discuss some of the complications that nurses can come across when dealing with cultural diversity.

For a successful profession, cultural competence should be put into consideration to create an environment that favors better communication. Since migration of people across the globe has increased, it has resulted to a population that is ethnically diverse. Nurses must therefore interact with a diversified community, hence the need to learn about their culture. When involved in a work team, the following disciplines should be considered: valuing diversity, having the ability to asses and scrutinize culture, to be aware of differences that emerge when different culture interact, ability to adapt the means of service delivery with culture diversity in mind, as well as institutionalizing the knowledge of

Cultural diversity is one the topics that have too many audiences among the nurses. I have been working in hospital for over two years and I personally saw that the nursing population and the patient population are made by the people from different cultures and ethnicities. From one aspect this is a good phenomenon. The reason is the differentiation of cultures causes less discrimination and more acceptances. Meanwhile, it may cause some conflicts between different believes and habits. Having different background and culture caused somehow anxiety in my personal life experience, but meanwhile it helped me to look at my patient population and coworkers in broader spectrum. These differences may cause some challenges for the nurses in order

We have all heard the cliché comment it takes all kinds of people to make this world. One of the unique aspects of nursing is the direct access to a large population of different and diverse cultures. An effective nurse considers concepts, relevant components and barriers of each individual culture; proficiently examining how being culturally competent can enhance their future practices.