Culture and Safety

This document discusses the importance of culturally safe health practice in community healthcare. It covers the goals, objectives, barriers, and evaluation tools involved in providing culturally safe care. The content emphasizes the need for collaboration and understanding of cultural values to address community health issues effectively.

Running head: CULTURE AND SAFETY
CULTURE AND SAFETY
Name of Student
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Table of Contents
PART 1.......................................................................................................................................2
Introduction............................................................................................................................2
Goal setting............................................................................................................................2
Community health care objectives.........................................................................................3
Pre campaign training............................................................................................................3
Barriers to culturally safe community healthcare framework................................................4
Evaluation tools......................................................................................................................4
PART 2.......................................................................................................................................5
Plan of action..........................................................................................................................5
Handling the barriers..............................................................................................................5
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6

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PART 1
Introduction
Culturally safe health practice is one of most primordial form of healthcare
interventions. There are fundamental patient centric and specific community centric goals
that has to be addressed while planning for a particular community health care. Steps have to
be taken to ensure that the ‘cultural’ integrity (Lyubashits et al., 2015) is preserved and
maintaining without any breaching of ethical (Preshaw et al., 2016) medical (Curtis et al.,
2016). or social barriers (Smith, 2017). Culturally safe health practice focuses on conserving
the ‘values’ and ‘morals’ of a cultural and this strategy becomes imperative to handle the
various facets of community health issues, with a greater impact. Culturally safe health
practice (Holt et al., 2018) has been existent in almost all human communities much before
the emergence of medical or surgical health system and it is still a sensitive ‘touch point’
when a healthcare professional or a team of healthcare professional has to merge with a
concerned community to extend the strategic medical interventions. There are many variants
of traditional and alternative healthcare practices persistent with a specific community and
that’s how, the traditional- spiritual healing (Ameli, R et al., 2018), social and socio- cultural
values (Fanzo & Glass, 2018) has made them survive over the centuries. To eliminate such
practices which often not scientific is turning the threat to eliminate the survival of the whole
culture. As because, a proper healthcare system, even a primary healthcare is rare in these
regions and also very difficult to be established in these areas either to geographical or
ecological disparity – hence, a culturally safe healthcare practice should be promoted to
manage the ‘issues’ of the community holistically.
Goal setting
The primary goals of a community health nurse is to better the health situation of the
diabetes mellitus inflicted society, to create an awareness in the community about the disease,

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to impart the ‘disease knowledge’ to the people of the community so that they can prevent the
causation or the progression of the disease, to devise a collaborative system of care between
the traditional healers, spiritual practitioners, social workers, nursing and medical specialists
working towards the community betterment and my long term goal is to make the community
members – the leaders of their self -sustainable healthcare system.
Community health care objectives
There are certain clear objectives to fulfill the multiple needs and actions of a
community health service. As a community health nurse working towards a culturally safe
‘management’ and elimination of diabetes mellitus from a affected community – one has to
work within the ‘framework’ of the community medicine and rehabilitation guidelines if the
practitioner will have to do any good to the condition of these diabetic people. An interpreter
can be very valuable to the working of community health team and he would serve as an
important link to interpret the campaign feedbacks from the community people. Long term
diabetes mellitus can lead to a myriad of complex disorders like diabetic neuropathy (Pop-
Busui et al., 2017), renal failure, cardiovascular dysfunction(Kassan et al., 2016) and other
cardio respiratory problems (Cairne et al., 2017.) as well. Hence, a community health
practitioner will have to abide by the principles of culturally safe heath practice to deliver the
decided pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions to a community setting.
Pre campaign training
A pre campaign nursing training or a multi-lingual healthcare workshop with a high
quality delivery of concerned community specific skills and knowledge is pivotal in making
of a successful community care campaign. The nurses should be trained with the knowledge
regarding the exclusive values of the concerned culture and how the system of traditional
healing is established over the years and how their health campaign is beneficial to them.

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Barriers to culturally safe community healthcare framework
There are certain barriers though that exists to this form of health practice and apt
strategies should be made to overcome these barriers. Firstly, the healthcare experts from the
disciplines of nursing, medical and allied health professionals becomes tentative to leave their
lavish city hospitals and visit distant and remote communities to treat the affected patients.
This must be managed by providing regular training sessions on the same and by making this
community health interventions a compulsory regime, in their respective disciplines.
Secondly, a ‘knowledge gap’ between the nurses and the doctors while treating a community
issue can be a major drawback towards the collaboration and this intrinsic problem must be
handled from the very beginning as to what medicines and non-pharmacological will be used
to treat the community problem. Thirdly, a cultural gap between the visiting health
practitioners and the targeted community members suffering from long term, untreated or
traditionally treated diabetes mellitus is a barrier as well. As to counter this problem, inter
cultural communication, understanding the dialects and implied, connotative expressions of
the community people is pivotal in delivery the treatment process with culturally safe
protocols. Lastly, the associated disabilities, for example, sensory gait is a huge complication
of long term diabetes mellitus and it leads to walking problems and even falls. This can be
dreadful for the geriatric population and extra care has to be taken to manage the old people
of the concerned community. Hence, I need to work and intervene collaboratively with the
allied health professionals for a more ‘focused’ and ‘determined’ management of the health
issue.
Evaluation tools
As for evaluation of the delivered health services, I will be focusing on patient
feedback as the most crucial form of service evaluation. Other than that, I will be using pain

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assessment, sensory assessment, gait assessment and disability scales as other tools to mark
the service led changes. Positive patient feedback will be an indicator of success outcome.
PART 2
Plan of action
As a community health nurse, my personal plan of action has been developed on the
basis of social, cultural, economic, health and collaborative needs of the community. The
disease diabetes mellitus has a very subtle metabolic onset and dietary and lifestyle changes
can always prevent the onset of the disease. Hence, my first action would be creating
awareness about the young members of the community who are yet not affected by the
disease. My second action would be managing the active suffers of the disease with
medications and non-pharmacological interventions which is critical to handle the underlying
pathology and symptomatic relapse of the disease. My third action would be to develop and
work within a multidisciplinary collaborative team who works efficiently with social workers
and traditional healers of the given community to bring about a practice change. Lastly,
disability management through a joint effort of rehabilitation specialists, physiotherapists and
occupational therapists along with my nursing team is crucial to the improvement of the
community health situation.
Handling the barriers
As for handling and negating the barriers – being a heard community nurse, I would
take the whole responsibility of training the other junior nurses on the importance of
community heath. Secondly, to work within the cultural framework that includes the
community workers, spiritual, crystal and reiki healers who is more intelligible about their
society than scientifically is a huge barrier that needs a smart and efficient, workable
‘collaborative strategy’ to bring in the different types of practitioners together. I would be

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taking my and my team’s responsibility to achieve the same. Sessions and meetings regarding
plan of work must be strategized prior to the inception of health campaign as to what
medicines, what exercise protocols and what preventive measures are to be used specifically
for the given community, presenting with this signs and that relapsing symptoms of the long
term insidious metabolic disease. As to bridge the cultural gap, experienced community
health nurses, social workers who has previously worked in the concerned or chosen region
has to be a part of my nursing team. I need to work closely with them to provide the
necessary care to the community people.
Conclusion
Hence it can be concluded saying that midwives and nurses are desired to engage
emotionally and professionally with community people in their individual sphere in a very
culturally safe, ethical way in on order to foster compassionate and obedient professional
relationships (Bloomfield & Pegram, 2015). Adherence to the clinical obligations is to be
practiced with faith and confidentiality. Health services nowadays provide an essential
cultural health safety training to their professional staffs on a regular basis. Practicing the
basics of clinical best practices like evidence based practices, adhering to clinical guidelines,
adhering to community health guidelines, practicing the nursing principles of obedience,
sincerity, non-maleficence, beneficence and totality, positive and quality collaboration with
the other disciplines are the critical aspects which are to be incorporated while developing a
culturally safe community healthcare campaign.

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