Culturally Safe Practice in Healthcare

This article discusses the concept of culturally safe practice in healthcare and its importance in providing quality patient-centered care. It explores the values, beliefs, and behaviors that contribute to or detract from culturally safe practice. The article also highlights the core principles and attributes of culturally safe practice in a multicultural health environment.

Running head : CULTURALLY SAFE PRACTICE
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

Culturally safe practice
Contributing factors
Detracting factors
Beliefs:
vidual have equal rights and therapeutic communication and touch can heal
Values: empathy and honesty
Behavior:
Use polite words and transparency as well as
Engaging a patient in the therapeutic communication process
as was
Values
Lack of endurance and lack of autonomy
Beliefs:
lack of individualism and and men hold more power than wom
Behavior:
Decision of family members over patients and biased towards the opin
Part 1:

Part 2:
Introduction:
The concept of culturally safe practice involves the empowerment of health care
practitioner and the patient (Cusack, 2019). Developing culturally safe practice is the
core of many efforts that are given by health professionals to improve patient quality.
The mountain of the researches in the literature highlight that cultural safety and
providing culturally safe, responsive patient-centered practice is influenced by the
cultural values, beliefs, and attitude of the health professionals (Kildea et al., 2019).
Therefore it is crucial to reform the value, beliefs, and attitude of health professionals to
provide culturally safe practice (Andermann, 2016).This paper will reflect on the cultural
values, beliefs, and attitude of me which contributed to the culturally safe practice.
Discussion:
With the growing prevalence of chronic disease, primary care services
contributed to an increase in safe public health around the globe (Garneau & Pepin,
2015). However, in a community, considerate individuals with different cultural values
and ethnicity seek clinical help and in these cases, it is the responsibility of health
professionals to provide culturally safe and responsible care to each individual of the
community (Almutairi, McCarthy & Gardner, 2015). As discussed by Olukotun et al.
(2018), there are core principles of culturally safe and responsive care followed by every
health professionals to provide culturally safe practice to the community. These
principles involve reflecting on own practice by reforming personal values and beliefs
and being aware of the influence of behavior, minimizing the power differences
between the client and health care providers, Engage in a therapeutic conversation
with the client, undertaking a process of decolonization to empowering the patient and
incorporating cultural beliefs and values of the client. (Usher et al., 2016) These
principles not only empower clients but also facilitate faster recovery of clients with high
satisfaction (Darroch et al., 2017). The core attributes of providing culturally safe
practice in multicultural health environment are excellent therapeutic communication

skill and empathy, compassion and interpersonal along with collaborative skills
(Jennings, Bond & Hill, 2018).
In the current context, few cultural values beliefs and associated behavior
influenced the practice of the health professionals. As a Lebanese Christian there are
certain core cultural values and beliefs influenced behavior of health professionals while
providing culturally safe practice. As a Lebanese Christian, health professional’s
personal values such as empathy and honesty which contributed to culturally safe
practice. While interacting with the patient of different cultures in the community they
these values tend to reflect in behavior of health professionals. While communicating
with the patient, health professionals become empathetic towards patients after listening
to their narration, they use polite words and try to comfort them in hugs which in turn
give them a sense of comfort, safe and empowered. While communicating with the
patient health professionals become transparent with the patients about their health
issues which further contributed to the culturally safe practice. On the other hand, there
are certain values that detract health professionals from culturally safe practice. The
values include the lack of endurance for injustice where health professionals feel
impulsive which sometimes offend patients. While providing care to the individuals from
the advantageous area health professionals feel they require social justice which
further influenced their behavior since the health professionals participate in many
advocacy campaigns to provide advantages to the socially disadvantageous individual’s
even if they are not interested which threatened their dignity. These further highlighted
another value such as lack of autonomy which threatened dignity. The health
professionals prioritize interventions over the decision of patient where the individual’s
feel disrespected and the health professionals failed to provide culturally safe care.
Considering beliefs, health professionals who are Christian Lebanese have
certain beliefs that influenced their culturally safe practice. The first belief they have is
that they believe every individual have equal rights of receiving health care facilities,
irrespective of cast and sociodemographic status which reflect in their behavior. In the
community, while providing culturally safe care, they treat people equally and provide
care and support equally. Second they believe that therapeutic communication and

touch can heal every individual with health issues which influence their behavior. While
providing care, the health professionals engage a patient in the therapeutic
communication process which makes them feel empowered, safe a comfortable.
However, two negative beliefs they have which detract them from continuing culturally
safe practice. Since they brought up in the collectivities society where they experienced
a lack of individualism, they believe that it is the rights of family members to take part in
society. This belief further influenced their behavior because they consider the
decision of family members sometimes over the sick individuals since they feel it is best
for them. Many individuals do not want to involve family members in the care process
or they want to take their decision of treatment. In these cases, they feel offended.
Secondly, they brought up in the society which promotes muscularity and they usually
believe men hold more power than women which influenced their behavior. Sometimes
they become more biased towards the opinion of males’ family members of the patient
such as father, brother or husband which is also applied to the pregnant women who
comes as a patient in the community.
As discussed by many authors that communication skills are crucial for
promoting culturally safe practice. As discussed by Almutairi, McCarthy & Gardner
(2015) the key attributes of good communication are empathy, listening, respect
emotional Intelligence. While communicating with a patient I use clear and concise
statement and maintain eye contact with the patient, listen to their concerns, share their
experiences with the patient and they feel comfortable and empowered. These further
ensure that I have good communication skills for promoting culturally safe practice.
Conclusion:
Thus, it can be concluded that, are core principles of culturally safe and
responsive care followed by every health professionals to provide culturally safe
practice to the community. Lebanese Christian there are certain core cultural values
and beliefs influenced their behavior while providing culturally safe practice. The
positive behavior identified they will incorporate in the future practice and for negative
behavior identified in the discussion, they would be required reform their values and
beliefs to promote culturally safe practice.

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