University Nursing Essay: Culture's Role in Nursing Practice

This essay delves into the profound impact of culture on nursing practice, highlighting the critical importance of culturally responsive and competent care. It defines culture and its influence on individual perceptions, interactions, and behaviors, emphasizing its integration into medical care and patient-centered approaches. The essay explores culturally responsive care, which considers cultural and social factors in patient management, and culturally competent care, which equips nurses with the skills and knowledge to appreciate cultural differences. The discussion encompasses the effects of culture on patient-provider communication, health beliefs, and behaviors, including language barriers, religious beliefs, and social organizations. The essay also addresses the need for nurses to understand and respect cultural differences among themselves, promoting effective teamwork. In conclusion, the essay underscores the vital role of culture in driving healthcare improvements, advocating for transcultural nursing care as a standard practice to enhance patient recovery and well-being.

1Running head: NURSING
Nursing
Name of student:
Name of university:
Author note:

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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
competency refers to the skills, attitudes and knowledge required by practitioners to
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

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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-cultural communication skills. Further, culturally sensitive care requires an
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 in a 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.

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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

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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.

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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.