Developing Cultural Safety Skills in Mental Health Nursing

Running head: CULTURAL SAFETY
CULTURAL SAFETY
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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CULTURAL SAFETY
Introduction:
Cultural safety can be defined as the environment that is socially, culturally,
physically, emotionally as well as spiritually safe for the people and where there is no assault,
challenge or denials of the real identity of the service users and who they are and what the
need (Visovsky et al., 2016). It is important for every healthcare professional in the mental
health service to examine their own beliefs, behaviours as well as practices to reflect on their
own cultural biasness and thereby ensure that the services they provide to mental health
patients from various cultural backgrounds to be culturally safe, culturally competent and
makes patients feel satisfied and respected (Holland, 2017). This assignment will include
development of personal action plan which would be followed by me to develop cultural
safety skills and I would put forward the rationale supporting each strategies outlined in the
action plan.
Part one:
Action plan:
Goals:
The main goal would be to develop my ability to develop cultural safety in my work
practices in the mental healthcare services so that I can provide culturally competent care to
mentally ill people coming from different backgrounds like different generations, ages,
sexual orientation, ethnicities, religions, different socio-economic status, spiritual beliefs.
Objectives:
 To develop cultural appraisal or assessment capabilities which would help me in
identifying different cultural domains of varied differences among various cultures

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CULTURAL SAFETY
that need to be considered by me so as to ensure preparing an appropriate person-
family centred care
 Improve my cultural consciousness as well as awareness about the different attributes
and constructs of my own culture and then recognising the unique differences and
similarities between my culture and that of the others. Studies are of the opinion that
engaging with minority cultural groups is imperative to the procedures of cultural
consciousness and thereby building collaborative care planning ensuring recovery
oriented care services (Varcarolis, 2016).
 Development of cultural safety skill through which I can develop appropriate
behaviours, attitudes as well as communication strategies; these would help me to
work as per the preferences and expectation of the cultural groups and this would
reduce the gap of inequities in health in the nation (Arnold & Boggs, 2019)
Resources and additional training required
 The first resource would be undertaking cultural safety skill development workshop
which would be mentored by eminent trainers who would not only help me develop
attributes for cultural safety but would also point out the weaknesses I have that I
need to overcome to meet the gaols
 The second resource would be having the access to the digital library of the university
from where I would be able to undertake evidence based researches and go through
many recent publications about cultural safety on mental health practices and enhance
my skills and knowledge
 I would be also interviewing many eminent professionals in the mental healthcare
fields who have huge years of experiences in handling patients from varied cultural
backgrounds. The experiences that they have gathered would help me develop ways
by which I can enhance my cultural safety ability as well (Garneau & Pepin, 2015).

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CULTURAL SAFETY
Their advices to me would prove to be helpful to make me become culturally
competent as well
Barriers and strategies:
 I live alone in the nation with no extended families and therefore, I have to complete
my household chores myself without any help. These often develop stress in me and
in addition to attending classes and lectures drain my energy. Lack of energy and
concentration can become one of the barriers that might develop apathy and impeded
my motivation to explore the new skills of cultural safety (DeJesus et al., 2016)
 Besides, attending lectures and performing my household chores, I also do part time
job for my living and expenses. All these consume huge amount of time and thereby
allocating separate time separately for workshops and training would be very difficult
for me (Polacek et al., 2015)
 Moreover, being exposed to wide range of prejudices and discrimination about the
different cultural groups might have made me culturally biased unintentionally.
Overcoming such cultural biasness would be difficult and would require rigorous self-
determination and self-awareness
Method of evaluation:
 The main method of evaluation would be seeking for feedback from my professors,
colleagues and classmates regarding my development in ensuring cultural safety
 Another method would be evaluating the scores that I would get from the mock tests
on the cultural safety attribute development held by the mentors in the workshops
 I would also undertake reflective writing to reflect on my improvement. I would
maintain a reflective journal and also maintain a portfolio which would help me in my
future job searches as well