Patient-Centered and Culturally Safe Care Research Paper 2022

Running head: CRITICAL REFLECTION 1
Patient-Centered and Culturally Safe Care
Name
Institution

CRITICAL REFLECTION 2
Critical Reflection
Introduction
Thesis statement: providing a patient-centred and culturally safe care is a fundamental part of the
practice of nursing that helps in ensuring quality and improved health outcomes. A patient-
centred approach to care ensures that the specific health needs and the health outcomes that are
desired by an individual form the basis of all the healthcare decisions to ensure quality and safe
health outcomes. This approach sees patients as partners with the healthcare practitioners thus
ensuring that the practitioners offer care that is not only clinically appropriate but also
emotionally, socially, spiritually, mentally, and financially appropriate. The missions and values
of this type of care are aligned with the goals of the patient. Additionally, the patient’s family are
included in the care plan to improve health outcomes. It is also important to note that patient-
centred care must be culturally safe to improve patient experience and improve health outcomes.
Cultural safety empowers both the patient and the healthcare practitioner and the idea of
culturally safe care was established because of the poor health status of the aboriginal
Australians. The values and beliefs of an individual are assessed and the potential they have on
people identified. In this paper, I will talk about a client I met during my practice as a student
nurse and the health issues faced by the client. I will additionally use the codes and standards of
nursing practice in addition to the knowledge gained throughout the course to reflect on my
future practice. Furthermore, I will discuss the impact of cultural factors in my future practice in
the provision of health care that is culturally safe to the Aboriginal and Torres Islander people.

CRITICAL REFLECTION 3
Selected Client
A year ago while working in a public hospital in Adelaide, I met a 30-year-old male patient from
the aboriginal community. His name was Lewis; a very interesting and outgoing man. He
presented at the hospital with a heart attack. He had been rushed to the hospital by his young
brother and he was unresponsive. I was happy to receive him and offer him the best care to
ensure that he had a safe and quality health outcome. It was a good experience to witness the
smile and happiness on his face due to the care that I provided. We managed to create a good
patient-nurse relationship that allowed him to confide and have trust in me. I made sure that he
was part of the decision-making regarding the procedures and medications that were proposed
for his recovery.
I must, however, accept that the experience came with a lot of challenges that I may not have
expected when I started. Firstly, I was still just a student nurse and massively inexperienced at
this level. I did not know how to handle patients appropriately but these are things that get better
with time and more experience. Additionally, Lewis was a little sceptical when he appeared at
the hospital’s emergency department. This was due to his previous experience at another hospital
where he faced discrimination due to his aboriginal connections. He, therefore, felt that he could
not be offered quality care as required by the scope of nursing practice. It took a lot of
convincing to make him believe that quality care was guaranteed at our facility. There were also
a lot of doubts about cultural safety because he had not been treated by a doctor who clearly
understood the aboriginal culture. He even believed that this lack of cultural safety and
understanding was the basis of the discrimination he faced. I, therefore, had to show him that I
was ready to provide culturally safe care that was patient-centred.