This assignment explores the significant influence of culture on nursing practice. The essay analyzes how cultural variations affect patient healthcare, treatment decisions, and the nurse-patient relationship. It emphasizes the importance of culturally competent nursing care and its impact on positive patient outcomes.
Contribute Materials
Your contribution can guide someone’s learning journey. Share your
documents today.
1Running head: NURSING Nursing Name of student: Name of university: Author note:
Secure Best Marks with AI Grader
Need help grading? Try our AI Grader for instant feedback on your assignments.
2 NURSING The importance of culture in nursing professional practice has been highlighted continually in research across the domain. Culture is defined as the traditions, norms and values that define how an individual thinks, perceives, interacts and behaves in a certain situation. Culture is also known to influence how an individual would make judgements about the world around. For many decades, cultural factors have been integrated into the dialogues around medical care initiatives and patient-centred care delivered by nurses. Nurses are required to promote a culturally competent and culturally responsive practice through their care delivery (Almutairi, McCarthy and Gardner 2015). The present essay would discuss the impact of culture on nursing practice. The paper would highlight the importance of culturally responsive and culturally competent nursing practice. Culturally responsive care refers to the care presented as an extension of patient- centred care including attention being given to cultural and social factors while managing the patient condition. The aim of such a practice is to manage encounters in a manner that takes into consideration the cultural and social backgrounds of the patient. In nursing practice, culturally responsive care is embedded in the practice of using a set of tools that can be incorporated into the interactions with patients coming from diverse backgrounds (Spector and Tabloski 2014). As opined by Black (2016) cultural competency is significant for individual nurse practitioners as well as service organisations. At the individual level, cultural competencyreferstotheskills,attitudesandknowledgerequiredbypractitionersto acknowledge and appreciate differences in culture among the patient population. According to Garneau and Pepin (2015), the impact of culture on the nursing profession is noteworthy. The authors define culturally effective practice as the one that takes into consideration race, gender, religion, language, education level, social class and ethnicity of the patients. A nurse is to adhere to such practice while carrying out the patient assessment, diagnosis and treatment. A fundamental premise of culturally safe and sensitive
3 NURSING practice is that care professionals understand that their culture can be different from that of the patients. For example, the American culture is different from the Australian culture with respect to a number of attributes. Nurses are to understand where one culture differs from another in ways that might have an impact on patient-provider communication, thereby influencing patient health outcomes. Resistance to differences in culture is common for human beings and individuals are prone to give undesirable reactions to differences in culture automatically. However, for nurses, it is crucial that such reactions are not given in any clinical scenario. Throwing light on the importance of culture in patient-provider communication, Jeffreys (2015) stated that culture determines the nature of communication between the two parties. Since culture, predominantly religion, ethnicity and class, influences language, nurse face challenges while communicating patients who speak diverse languages. It is to be mentioned that both verbal and non-verbal communication plays an integral role in nursing care. Some patients are easy to communicate with, for other the approach to be taken is different. Civility, politeness, and affection are what patients look for in their care providers. Diaz, Clarke and Gatua (2015) highlighted that a nurse’s ability to engage in a transparent communication in cross-cultural interactions is widely augmented by the grasp of cross-culturalcommunicationskills.Further,culturallysensitivecarerequiresan understanding of the manner in which culture influences health beliefs and behaviours. Delivering linguistically apposite care needs the ability to assess any requirement for interpreters and to interact with interpreters properly ina clinical setting. Shambley-Ebron (2015) in this regard commented that culture is to be perceived by the nurses as the unique manner of living upheld by a certain population. Cultural diversity is common in any health care setting, and it is the responsibility of the nurses to acknowledge this fact.
4 NURSING Giger (2016) gave valuable insights into the impact of religious beliefs and traditions in the nursing process. As per the authors, different patient populations have firm belief and dependence towards a traditional system of healing and treatment. These mainly relate to using holistic treatment options and spiritualistic healing. While some patients might be resistant to western medicine practice, falling back on their traditional customs and rituals, others might insist on using their preferred choice of treatment in adjunct with modern medicine. In such cases, nurses are to engage in proper decision making and do what is best for better patient outcomes. Cherry and Jacob (2016) have also discussed the impact of religious beliefs and perceptions embedded in ethnicity. Religious sentiments are of more value than scientific explanations for health care for a certain section of patient population. Under such situations, nurses are often compared with religious practitioners such as rabbis and priests. End of life choices is also guided by such notions. Nurses are therefore expected to be thoughtful of the preferences patients have before planning the care plan that meets all care needs of the patient. In this regard the social organisations of patients are also to be discussed. Social organisations of a patient are important since some individuals view their family members as providers of care when they are sick. Nurse are to be considerate that members of the family are taken into consideration as a signficant part of care planning Cultural differences between nursing professionals also demand discussion. The underlying notion is that conflict resolution between professionals can be achieved if one acknowledges the cultural background of the other person. Since the multidisciplinary approach is taken for delivering apprehensive care, professionals working in collaboration with each other might face challenges in getting themselves heard. Respecting each other’s viewpoints and critical analysis in relation to the patient condition is imperative since all professionals work towards the same goal. It is not advisable to engage in conflict on the
Paraphrase This Document
Need a fresh take? Get an instant paraphrase of this document with our AI Paraphraser
5 NURSING basis of the fact that there are multidimensional differences in the cultural background among individuals (Black 2016). Coming to the end of the essay it can be concluded that culture remains as one of the most important factors driving healthcare in a positive direction. At the contemporary era, all nurses are required to demonstrate the ability to demonstrate culturally competent, responsive and sensitive care. The primary goal of a nurse is to work towards the recovery and wellbeing of the patient. Since culture directly influences the treatment and heath status of a patient, nurses cannot ignore culture. Transcultural nursing care is an accepted standard that is to be maintained by all nurses.
6 NURSING References Almutairi, A.F., McCarthy, A. and Gardner, G.E., 2015. Understanding cultural competence in a multicultural nursing workforce: registered nurses’ experience in Saudi Arabia.Journal of Transcultural Nursing,26(1), pp.16-23. Black, B., 2016.Professional Nursing-E-Book: Concepts & Challenges. Elsevier Health Sciences. Missouri. Cherry, B. and Jacob, S.R., 2016.Contemporary nursing: Issues, trends, & management. Elsevier Health Sciences. Missouri. Diaz, C., Clarke, P.N. and Gatua, M.W., 2015. Cultural competence in rural nursing education: are we there yet?.Nursing Education Perspectives,36(1), pp.22-26. Garneau, A.B. and Pepin, J., 2015. A constructivist theoretical proposition of cultural competence development in nursing.Nurse education today,35(11), pp.1062-1068. Giger, J. N. 2016.Transcultural Nursing-E-Book: Assessment and Intervention. Elsevier Health Sciences. USA. Jeffreys, M.R., 2015.Teaching cultural competence in nursing and health care: Inquiry, action, and innovation. Springer Publishing Company. New York. Shambley-Ebron, D.Z., 2015. Transcultural nursing promoting peace through practice and scholarship.Journal of Transcultural Nursing,26(5), pp.529-530. Spector, R.E. and Tabloski, P.A., 2014. Cultural diversity.Gerontological Nursing. Boston, MA: Pearson, pp.75-95.