Nursing Assignment on Hindu Culture, Bias, and Cultural Competency

This nursing assignment discusses the importance of purity in Hindu culture, biases towards lower social classes, and the need for cultural competency in healthcare. It suggests ways to overcome biases and improve communication with patients from diverse cultures. The author reflects on their strengths in medication management and areas for improvement in cross-cultural communication. Resources for improving cultural competency are also discussed.

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Nursing Assignment
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Question 1:
Hinduism is more than a religion and is a way of life that comes from a wide range of the
scriptures and the religious literature. In Hindu culture, purity is the most important trait and
there is a belief that the Hindus must reach purity in three forms like body, speech and mind. The
Hindu attitude relies on truth alone triumph but not the falsehood, truth leads to a divine path.
The prejudices are anti-dark skin, anti-Western, anti-Muslim, and anti-lower caste. Hindi is the
language that the majority of the Hindus speak. The structure of the Hindu society is laid out in
the following way Brahmin>Kshatriya>Vaishya>Shudra (Kamble et al., 2014).
Question 2:
As per the Hindu culture, Shudras or the Dalits belong to the lowermost sections of the
society and I have biases of taking care and delivering the healthcare to people belonging from
lower class or social sections (Satyanarayana, 2013). In my general practice as an enrolled nurse,
I will come across such people in hospital and care centres that will seek for healthcare. Thus,
taking care of such people that are Shudras will hinder me in my practice.
Question 3:
In order to address the bias that I hold, I think it is more of a psychological hindrance that
affecting me. Considering the fact that all men are born equal, it is always desirable for an
enrolled nurse to act according to the nursing ethics (McCarthy & Gastmans, 2015). Thus, the
biases that I am facing can be overcome if I consider my job and duty to be above instead of
considering the class of the humans to which he belongs.

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Question 4:
a) One of the aspects of the practice that I do very well is the medication management for
the patients. This is the most important part of care delivery considering its importance and the
way it affects the treatment procedures of the patients.
b) Whereas, there are areas which I require to enhance my skills and improve myself is
the communication with the patients that belong from the different culture. I have throughout my
graduation course have gone through the theoretical aspects of cross-cultural communication, but
I need to have more practical exposures.
The one way through which I can improve and enhance my skills is through the training,
workshops, and communicating more with the people that belong to the different culture (Park et
al, 2013).
Question 5:
Whenever I come in contact with the people that belong to the different culture, I have
faced issues in communication and this has affected me negatively in my care delivery. Often in
care delivery, I have encountered issues in establishing relationships with patients and found it
difficult to identify the health issues that patients are suffering from. The three examples where I
have faced issues are the identification of pain in patients, communication with the patients
belonging from a different culture, communicating with the family member of the patients that
also belong from other culture.

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Question 6:
In order to develop cultural competency, the necessary attitudes, skills and knowledge
that needs to be identified as an enrolled nurse are: improving the language and the
communication barriers, obtaining a certificate on cultural competence, perform a cultural
competence on self-assessment, engaging in the cross-cultural communication with the patients
(Truong, Paradies & Priest, 2014).
Question 7:
The instances where I have respected and recognised the needs of the people that belong
from the diverse social and cultural background are: I have the proper skill in medication
management and I was properly able to deliver medicine to the patients belonging from diverse
culture; I also showed respect to the patient of a different culture that demanded privacy with
respect to his opinions. The people that belong to the different community always want their
values to be respected by others and thus ensuring the same results in proper care delivery.
Working with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, due to the diverse culture
there is often a big issue of improper communication and this hampers and hinders the care
delivery (Durey et al., 2012).
Question 8:
The resources that embrace the organizations and support the individuals and also to
respond to diversity is to there is a need to recruit cultural competent nurses and nurse leaders
that will be providing guidance and training to the other nurses that lack cultural competency
(Douglas et al., 2014). The cultural interpreters are the one-stop solution and can provide the best

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solution for increasing the competency and reducing the language barrier between the patient and
the nurses.

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Reference
Douglas, M. K., Rosenkoetter, M., Pacquiao, D. F., Callister, L. C., Hattar-Pollara, M.,
Lauderdale, J., ... & Purnell, L. (2014). Guidelines for implementing culturally competent
nursing care. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 25(2), 109-121.
Durey, A., Wynaden, D., Thompson, S. C., Davidson, P. M., Bessarab, D., & Katzenellenbogen,
J. M. (2012). Owning solutions: a collaborative model to improve quality in hospital care
for Aboriginal Australians. Nursing inquiry, 19(2), 144-152.
Kamble, S. V., Watson, P. J., Marigoudar, S., & Chen, Z. (2014). Attitude towards Hinduism,
religious orientations, and psychological adjustment in India. Mental Health, Religion &
Culture, 17(2), 161-172.
Lee, S. K., Park, S. N., & Jeong, S. H. (2012). Nursing core competencies needed in the fields of
nursing practice for graduates in nursing. Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
Administration, 18(4), 460-473.
McCarthy, J., & Gastmans, C. (2015). Moral distress: A review of the argument-based nursing
ethics literature. Nursing Ethics, 22(1), 131-152.
Park, Y. I., Kim, J. A., Ko, J. K., Chung, M. S., Bang, K. S., Choe, M., ... & Jang, H. Y. (2013).
An identification study on core nursing competency. The Journal of Korean Academic
Society of Nursing Education, 19(4), 663-674.
Satyanarayana, K. (2013). Experience and Dalit Theory. Comparative Studies of South Asia,
Africa and the Middle East, 33(3), 398-402.

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Truong, M., Paradies, Y., & Priest, N. (2014). Interventions to improve cultural competency in
healthcare: a systematic review of reviews. BMC health services research, 14(1), 99.