Essay on Cultural Awareness in Nursing
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Added on 2020-05-28
Essay on Cultural Awareness in Nursing
Added on 2020-05-28
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Running head: CULTURAL AWARENESS IN NURSINGCULTURAL AWARENESS IN NURSINGName of the student:Name of the university:Author note:
1CULTURAL AWARENESS IN NURSINGIn the profession of nursing, it becomes important for the professionals to haveknowledge of two important aspects which would help to develop safe care for the patients.These are the concepts of morality and culture. Morality is important for nurses as it helps inshaping the different ways by which individual or groups derive meaning from characterdevelopment, behaviours, values and duties (Mareno & Hart, 2014). Concept of culture is alsoimportant in the pathway of developing nursing skills. This concept called the cultural selfawareness can be regarded as the journey of professionals which involves letting go of thepersonal presumptions as well as different assumptions about different people belonging todifferent race, ethnicity and colour. Researchers are of the opinion that once nursingprofessionals reach this level of self-awareness, they can initiate the process of becomingculturally competent (Long, 2016). This is indeed an important element in healthcare profession.This essay will mainly help in depicting how cultural self-awareness helps in developing culturalintelligence. This will also help to show its effect on nursing.Culture can be defined as the customary beliefs, social forms as well as material traits ofracial, social or religious groups. It also involves attributes of everyday existence, which areshared by people in different places like in one’s own work environment, among socialgatherings and many others. Therefore, the nursing professionalsneed to develop a culturallycompetent care to individuals so that the dignity of the patients is respected (Norton & Marks,2014). This is done by maintaining their cultural traditions while providing the best care to them.Researchers have stated that cultural competence is that attribte which describes how competentcare is given to patients that include proper behaviours, attitudes and policies. These support anegotiated process of providing proper care to patients across all languages and cultures (Shen,
2CULTURAL AWARENESS IN NURSING2015). In order to ensure competent care, it is important for nurses to develop cultural self-awareness.Researchers are of the opinion that patients, nurses and physicians – all have external andinternal cultures (Cushman et al., 2015). External cultural attributes involve an individual’s skintone, sexual characteristics as well as ethnicity. These are called the visible cues of the culture ofthe person. They may not represent an important attribute like who the individual actually is.Internal culture is composed of gender, birth order, politic and also how the individual views hisor her culture. In order to provide the best culturally competent care and to work properly withincreasingly global healthcare system, nurses need to consider two important aspects (Shen,2015). The first aspect is that they need to consider the culture of the patients and the second isthat they need to be aware of their own external and internal culture. The later is called culturalself-awareness, which is stated by researchers to be important as it helps the nursingprofessionals to identify their own biasness. Thereby they reflect upon the cultural attributes thatmay act as barriers in providing the best care to patients (Kohlbry, 2016). Reflecting on cultural self- awareness is important for development of culturalintelligence among the professionals. Cultural intelligence or cultural quotient can be defined asthe capability of the professionals to relate effectively across cultures and thereby workaccordingly, ensuring dignity and satisfaction among patients. For providing care to patients thatalign with the cultural traditions of the patients, it is important for nurses to understand their owncultural elements they follow and then reflect on their own biasness. They need to relate themand find their differences in their opinions and cultural likings with that of the patients (Cushmanet al., 2015). This activity would help the patients in understanding the thin line between theirown preferences and the preferences of the patients. They should try to overcome their own
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