Cultural Awareness and Competency in Nursing: A Case Study Report

This report delves into the crucial aspect of cultural awareness within nursing practice, emphasizing its significance in providing effective and patient-centered care. It highlights the increasing need for healthcare professionals to understand and respect diverse cultural backgrounds, particularly in light of evolving demographics. The report presents a case scenario involving a Muslim patient, illustrating the challenges that arise when cultural considerations are overlooked. It underscores the importance of cultural competency, which involves acquiring specific skills, behaviors, and attitudes to work effectively in cross-cultural settings. The report stresses the significance of self-awareness through reflection, enabling nurses to identify and address their own cultural biases. It outlines the key components of developing cultural competency, including acquiring knowledge about diverse cultures, cultivating positive attitudes, and honing practical skills. The report concludes by emphasizing the need for nurses to continuously enhance their understanding of cultural nuances to ensure culturally sensitive and respectful patient care. The report also mentions the importance of using city websites for demographic information, doing specific research within cultural groups and thereby visiting the local library of the university library to get resources to develop knowledge about different cultures.

DEVELOPING CULTURAL AWARENESS
DEVELOPING CULTURAL AWARENESS
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:
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Introduction:
Culturally competent nursing is one of the most important aspects of healthcare. It has
become one of the recent concerns in every healthcare industry of all nations as every nation has
become tolerable of diverse population coming from different parts of the world (Moore et al.
2017 pp: 320). Along with the growth of the numbers of diverse population, it has become
extremely important for healthcare professionals to develop skills which respect the needs of the
patients of different cultures and also providing them with care that aligns with their cultural
preferences and inhibitions. Researchers are of the opinion that cultural respect is very important
for the reduction of health disparities (Gallagher and Polanin 2015 pp: 337). They are also of the
opinion that culturally competent nursing is helpful in the improvement of the access to high
quality healthcare which is in turn respectable and responsive to patient’s needs. Nurses in all
these scenarios, should respond to the changing demographics of their patients so that they can
offer culturally sensitive care (Noble et al. 2014 pp 90). This assignment will mainly highlight
the different components that nurses should incorporate in their care practices for students so that
they provide best care for culturally diverse client. A case scenario would be taken which would
mainly help in acting as an example bout how nurses should handle different situation when
culturally diverse patients are admitted to the wards.
Case scenario:
A middle aged married woman of the Islam religion was admitted to the ward after she
had a fall in her garden. She had faced a skin tear and wounds in her hand and on her head which
had resulted in loss of large amount of blood. She was partially unconscious but was able to
respond and talk feebly. She was brought here by her husband who complained about similar
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symptoms of nausea and vertigo often. The nurse in charge in the emergency department was a
male healthcare member who immediately advised for blood transfusion due to loss of heavy
blood. She was wearing a hijaab which needed to be removed in order to undergo the stitching of
her skin tears as well as the dressing of the wounds. It created a huge issue in the ward as many
of the activities that were conducted by me and my nurse colleague were prevented either by her
husband or also by his wife. The first issue that was noted was they complained that they could
not allow exposure of the body of the patient in place of a male healthcare member which was
against the norms. Secondly another concern was that she was also not allowed to take blood
from any sources that are not of the same religion. Both the issues seemed to be quite disturbing
for us as it interrupted the smooth flow of the treatment which we usually conduct every day.
Moreover as they were not been able to communicate in English, it was really making difficult
for us to make the patient or her husband aware of the emergency of the situation. Moreover,
later they also complained that we were not respectable to them as we had talked with them with
eye contact which was not liked by them. After an hour, more than 8 members of his family
came to visit in the hospital that wanted to meet their patient but were not allowed to as
emergency patients are not subjected to interaction with more than one family member. All these
made them upset stating that their feelings and emotions were not respected as they were form
different religion. We got very upset with the entire situation the entire episode of the handling
of the patient and his family members were frustrating to us as we were facing several
interruptions in every arena of the assessments of her health.
Importance of cultural competency:
After severe criticism of the approach that we had taken for her assessments by the
nursing mentor we were able to understand the mistakes we conducted in her assessments.
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Different cultures have their own norms and traditions and the core of nursing profession
highlights the importance of respecting patients’ cultural preferences in such a way so that the
care they provide maintains autonomy, dignity and respect of culture of that patient (Long 2014
pp: 475). Researchers have defined the term culture as the thoughts, communications, customs,
beliefs, values, actions as well as institutions of ethnic, racial, religious or social groups. By the
development of cultural competency, nurses should develop the ability to acquire specific skills,
behaviors, attitudes as well as policies within the healthcare system that mainly portrays effective
work in cross cultural setting (Montenary et al. 2013 pp: 55). Researchers are of the opinion, that
nurses who are able to provide cultural competence in her practices and care to patients can
ensure positive health outcomes which in turn increases the patient satisfaction (Roberts et al.
2014 pp: 260 ).
Importance of self awareness through reflection:
For ensuring cultural competency, researchers have provided many strategies which
when followed in a sequential manner can help nurses gather the skills that ensure safe culturally
competent practices. The first one as stated by them is the development of self awareness and
sensitivity. Each and every human being have been born and brought up in their particular
surrounding that had influences of their own cultural beliefs and values. They incorporate these
cultural preferences and inhibitions in their own practices and other activities of life while
judging the morality of the actions they take (Diaz et al. 2015 pp: 25). Culture is learnt as well as
conveyed from generation to generation by the process of socialization. Therefore researchers
have also supported that it becomes the human habits to judge other’s actions in the lights of own
cultural morals of rights and wrongs. These prevent healthcare professionals of not being able to
justify other’s actions which they had taken aligning with their own cultural values (Almutairi,
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McArthy and Gardner 2015 pp: 20). Judging a patients’ activities with one’s own beliefs
avoiding the beliefs of the patients often create conflicts. Not only that being dominant by
judging other’s cultural beliefs in the lights of one have one’s cultural beliefs hamper the main
motive of nursing care (Ndiwane, Koul and Theroux 2014). Therefore, self reflection is very
necessary by which nurses can judge her actions and beliefs to develop cultural awareness and
cultural sensitivity. Researchers are of the opinion that cultural awareness can be developed by
effective reflection where a professional by observing and being conscious about the similarities
and contrasts of the different cultural groups with that of own culture can develop an
understanding of the differences (Baker and Began 2014 pp: 560). Different people have
different approach to health, illness and healing and knowing about the differences with own
culture will prevent nurses to judge them in light of their own culture. Reflection also helps in
developing cultural sensitivity which helps nurses to be aware of and also providing an
understanding of the deeper levels of emotions which are attached with one owns culture and the
way culture is perceived by us (Yang, Lim and Lee 2013 pp: 187). This automatically would
help the nurse to not imply one’s belief while judging the actions of culturally diverse people. In
the case scenario, if we had reflected on our own cultural preferences, traditions, beliefs and
others and also linking with the cultural beliefs of the Muslim patient, their actions would not
have been considered to be immoral and their suggestions and complaint would not have been
seen unjustified by us. Rather if we had been culturally aware and culturally sensitive, we could
have understand their perspective and would have been able to provide a culturally safe practice
to the. We would have never tried to judge their decisions with our own perspectives and this
would have not intensified the situation.
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My own cultural values and virtues:
I was quite unaware of the fact that I possessed cultural stereotypes without my knowledge.
Previously, I used to believe that I am quite open to all the cultures and respected all cultures
with equal fondness as like my own culture. Probably absence of any cultural interaction with
other cultures in my university years had made me think that I have no biasness towards them.
However, when I faced certain issues while tackling the Islam patient, it was then, I came to
know that internally I am not as open minded as I should be as nursing professional. I was
neither open minded about other cultures nor I had proper attitudes in handling culturally
sensitive cases. Moreover I realized that I was culturally dominant as I judged other cultural
traditions in light of my own cultural preferences. However, with the help of my mentor and
reflecting over the cases, I learnt about the issues that I need to change in future.
Development of cultural competent skills:
Knowledge:
Cultural competency skills can be developed with the following of three important
components that need to be inculcated in the practice and development of the nursing
professional skills. These components mainly involve the development of proper attitudes,
enhancing proper knowledge and developing skills to handle patient coming from different
backgrounds. The first component is development of cultural knowledge. The nurses should take
initiatives of developing knowledge about the cultural traditions, preferences, habits, inhibitions
and others of the different culturally diverse patients who often gets admitted in the healthcare
center (Alpers et al. 2014 pp: 1001). They should try to incorporate the knowledge during
development of the care plans so that the interventions they take are in accordance with the
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patients, preferences and do not become a barrier in the care for the patients. Being aware of the
patient’s ethnicity like those of the common genetic elements which are followed and shared by
them in accordance to their ancestry is extremely important. In the case depicted, if we were
aware of the Muslim traditions, cultures and preferences, we would have automatically be able to
develop ways and options by which we could have assessed the patients with techniques which
would not have upset them (Han and Cho chung 2015pp: 2015). We would have known about
how they would like to carry their treatments and therefore females’ nurses would have only
approached her. Without asking her to open up the hijab we could have cut clothes only on the
part where wounds were present. We could have not made eye contact with them and also would
allow huge number of relatives in a strategic manner. Researchers have recommended ways like
searching the city websites for demographic information, doing specific research within cultural
groups and thereby visiting the local library of the university library will help us to get resources
to develop knowledge about different cultures.
Attitudes:
The second important component which every individual should be incorporating is the
development of proper attitudes which are important to evolve as a culturally competent
caregiver. Each and every nurse should foster the positive attitude of being open minded so that
they can provide respect to all cultures in equal aspect (Mareno and Hart 2014 pp: 85). The
presence of self biasness which results in improper attitude will make a nurse be restrictive in her
practices while caring for the patients. Her attitude should reflect transparency and no negative
feeling for any culture should be harbored as this may impact the care as all are human being and
emotional outflow is natural. Positive attitudes with the need for identification and debunking of
stereotypes are extremely important (Seio and Kwon 2014 pp: 420). Having a negative attitude
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portrays a lack of sensitivity without knowing how their actions are affecting patients. Therefore
it is extremely important to reflect on one’s own cultural attitude so that the most subtle of the
different types of stereotypical tendencies so that they do not affect the level of care to the
patientsv (Kim and Kim 2013pp: 166). In the case depicted, form the very first moment, we were
harboring a dominant attitude where we were not giving a scope to ourselves only to understand
the Muslim patient’s perspectives and were judgmental about their actions. Such an action
reflects our negative attitude.
Skills:
The next set is the development of correct set of skills which will ensure cultural
competency. The best skill that would ensure cultural competency is the learning of the language
which would overcome the language barrier. Developing skills to use translator for non English
speaking patients or utilizing certain phrases or words which make them understand the plan of
care us extremely important (Truong et al. 2014 pp: 99). Moreover learning the skills of
flexibility to easily adapt to different new and different situations in the healthcare wards are also
important. Moreover skill to make the patients feel relaxed and development of close
relationships with the patients of diverse culture are also important to prevent them from feeling
new to the surrounding of healthcare wards (Kohlbry 2016 pp: 313). Knowing their requirements
and providing them with the proper care with the exact modified techniques increase patient
satisfaction and therefore it needs to be developed. In the depicted case, if we were able to
communicate with the patients and family members effectively making them understand the
urgency of the situations, the situations would not have got so intensified. Moreover, of we
would have been able to develop a proper relationship with them making them feel included
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within the healthcare systems by providing dignity, the situation could have been handed more
responsibly.
Conclusion:
Cultural competency is extremely important for the healthcare professionals to ensure
care for patients that would have the best outcome. In order to increase patient satisfaction,
healthcare professionals need to overcome self biasness and stereotypes of other cultures. They
need to reflect on their own cultural beliefs and traditions so that they do not mask the cultural
preferences of the patients. Cultural self awareness and cultural sensitivity can be developed by
proper reflection by the professionals which ensure development of cultural competency.
Moreover, ensuring the correct knowledge, attitudes and skills regarding the development of
cultural competency are extremely important. Once these components are ensured by the
healthcare professionals, he can provide care to such patients with highest patient satisfaction.
With the appropriate use of the case scenario, it is thereby identified how proper cultural
awareness would have assured the best care for the patient.
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