Strategies for Ensuring Indigenous Cultural Respect in Nursing (Essay)

This essay reflects on the importance of Indigenous cultural respect within the clinical environment from a registered nurse's perspective. It emphasizes the need for nurses to respect patients' cultural beliefs and adhere to nursing codes of conduct, focusing on person-centered care. The essay outlines key strategies for implementing cultural respect, including empowerment through education, engagement and sharing with patients and stakeholders, establishing policies that advocate for cultural respect, prioritizing cultural competency in recruitment, and involving the community in all stages of patient care. The author highlights the significance of these strategies in promoting optimal healthcare outcomes for Indigenous patients and references relevant studies to support the proposed approaches. The essay aims to provide practical insights into fostering a culturally safe and respectful clinical environment.

Reflection exercise
Name:
Institution:
Tutor:
Date:

A reflection of what I would do as a registered nurse to ensure Indigenous cultural respect
within the clinical environment.
Often, nurses encounter patients with different cultural beliefs. According to the nursing codes of
conduct, a nurse is supposed to abide by or respect the cultures of the patient. This in other words
is known as person centered care where the decision of the patient matters most as compared to
that of the physician. There are different things that a nurse is supposed to do so as to instill
indigenous cultural respect within the clinical environment. Within this essay, I will reflect on
different things which I as a nurse can do in order to implement indigenous cultural respect
within the clinical environment.
Engagement and sharing
The first thing I would do to ensure indigenous cultural respect within the clinical environment is
empowerment. Empowerment is the act of seeking relevant information or knowledge that is key
in autonomy and the decision making process (Clifford, McCalman, Bainbridge, & Tsey, 2015,
p. 93). I will therefore ensure that I and other healthcare experts gets empowered on the
importance of indigenous cultural respect within the clinical environment. This includes
attending different learning programs that focus on educating the importance of cultural respect.
I will ensure that I Work in partnerships with the aim of implementing cultural respect. Since
several studies argue that engagement and sharing is one of the best ways to incorporate an
evidence based approach in healthcare, I will always ensure that I build trust by working with
different stakeholders and the patient. I will ensure that I seek clarification on anything I don’t
understand about culture (Jones, Lattof, & Coast, 2017, p. 12). Furthermore, I will also involve

family members of the patient in case the patient is not in a position to make any meaningful
decisions.
Respect
I will also set up policies that advocate for cultural respect. A policy is basically a guiding
principle at any institution or organization. Policies are very important since they regularly
remind us of what we should do or not. I will therefore come up with a policy that advocates for
cultural respect. The policy can then be pinned at every department so that as nurses and other
handle any patient, they stick or adhere to cultural respect.
Moving forward.
I will make cultural competency a priority during recruitment and involve the community in
everything. I will ensure that any nurse to be recruited is fully aware of the cultural expectations
of indigenous patients before being hired. Furthermore, I will ensure that I involve the
community from assessment, intervention and finally discharge. This is because the communities
hold the key to cultural beliefs that most nurses are unaware of. Several studies note that
indigenous cultural respect within the clinical environment is one of the factors that contributes
to optimal healthcare among different patients (Liaw et al., 2019, p.265). I will therefore ensure
that I utilize the above explained strategies to ensure that cultural respect within clinical
environments is fully developed wherever I will be working as a nurse.

References
Clifford, A., McCalman, J., Bainbridge, R., & Tsey, K. (2015). Interventions to improve cultural
competency in health care for Indigenous peoples of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the
USA: a systematic review. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 27(2), 89-98.
doi:10.1093/intqhc/mzv010
Jones, E., Lattof, S. R., & Coast, E. (2017). Interventions to provide culturally-appropriate
maternity care services: factors affecting implementation. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth,
17(1). doi:10.1186/s12884-017-1449-7
Liaw, S., Wade, V., Furler, J. S., Hasan, I., Lau, P., Kelaher, M., … Harris, M. F. (2019).
Cultural respect in general practice: a cluster randomised controlled trial. Medical Journal of
Australia, 210(6), 263-268. doi:10.5694/mja2.50031