Cultural Safety in Nursing: Values, Beliefs, and Behaviors

Running head: CULTURAL SAFETY IN NURSING
CULTURAL SAFETY IN NURSING
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

1CULTURAL SAFETY IN NURSING
Part 1
VALUES
CULTURAL
SAFETY IN
HEALH CARE
Kindness
Optimism
Honesty and trust
Caring and
compassion
BELIEF
S
God
Spirituality
Patient first
Understanding family’s
role in health care
BEHAVIOUR
Good communication skills
Emotional stability
Enthusiasm
Caring behavior

2CULTURAL SAFETY IN NURSING
Part 2 Reflection
Introduction
The diverse consumerism of the health care makes it essential to practice cultural safety
in health care. Self-realization of own culture, beliefs and values are necessary to understand and
accept the culture of others. In this reflective paper I would critically reflect upon my own
understanding about the cultural safety. I aim to incorporate the cultural safety in my nursing
practice by reflecting on my own culture, beliefs, values, attitudes and behavior and how they
impact the health services provided by me. In this paper I will also perform a self-assessment for
the self-judging and enhancing my professional practice.
Cultural safety
Cultural safety can be defined as an environment that is physically, socially, mentally and
emotionally safe for the people belonging to different cultural background. The concept of
cultural safety takes us above cultural awareness and acknowledgement of the differences
(Gerlach, 2012). Cultural awareness helps in practicing a care that is devoid of any inequalities
or bias. In the light of cultural safety a health care professional can improve care provision for
the patients, expose the social, political and the historical contexts of the health care, enable the
practitioners to eradicate discrimination, racism and prejudice and finally challenge the biased
power relations (Taylor & Guerin, 2010).
Self-perception about values
Over recent years we have been witnessing a downfall of the morale in health care, which
is often expressed as feelings of not being values. It is my culture and the upbringing that defines
my values. Some of the values that helps in providing a cultural safe care to the patients are
kindness, Optimism, caring and compassion, honesty and trust. Apart from the health care
provided these are some of the factors that enhance the patient care (Halligan, 2008).
Kindness is the basic element of the profession of nursing. Being kind requires a health
professional to remain vulnerable themselves while acknowledging the distress and the
vulnerability in the patient (Ellis & Rawson, 2015). Some times when we cannot offer any help