University Nursing Assignment: Cultural Competency in Healthcare

This nursing assignment essay explores the critical importance of cultural competency in healthcare, particularly in the context of an increasingly diverse patient population. The essay emphasizes the challenges healthcare professionals face in effectively communicating with patients from various cultural backgrounds, highlighting the impact of cultural insensitivity on patient care quality and outcomes. It underscores the need for awareness of patients' beliefs, values, and behaviors to improve communication and reduce health disparities. The essay references the significant health disparities between indigenous and non-indigenous populations in Australia as a case study, advocating for a shift from standardized care to culturally competent healthcare models. It discusses communication strategies for understanding cultural and non-verbal cues, and highlights how effective communication can mitigate language barriers, patient dissatisfaction, and poor treatment compliance. The essay concludes by emphasizing that promoting culturally competent communication can reduce disparities in healthcare, increase patient trust, and improve health outcomes, ultimately reducing the burden on the healthcare system.

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Nursing assignment
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Essay:
With the increase in diversity of the nation and presence of culturally diverse group of
patients, communicating in an effective manner has become a challenging task for health care
professionals. Lack of awareness about patient’s belief, values, attitudes and behavior in specific
cultural context further affects the communication process between staff-patients and has an
impact on the quality of care. In such condition, it has become important to raise awareness
about the importance of effective communication to deal with culturally diverse people
(Betancourt et al., 2016). Hence, the information mentioned in power point is aimed to provide
proper knowledge to all those people who will be new placed in health care service. It will
enlighten them with the process needed to achieve cultural competency goal.
Health care organizations are now working a lot to train their staffs in cultural
competency and this has also become a priority due to the rise in health disparity in ethnic and
racial groups. For instance, there is great difference in health outcome between the indigenous
and non-indigenous Australians. This is mainly seen due to the shorter life expectancy, high rates
of infant mortality, poor health and low level of education and employment in indigenous people
compared to the rest of the population (Australians Together, 2017). To reduce the health
disparities of indigenous Australians, there is a need to shift from standardized care and adapts
culturally competent health care model. Hence, culturally competency and effective
communication is also necessary to provide equal access to health care and positive experiences
to disadvantaged group.
The power point has given information related to the approach needed to improve
communication process while dealing with culturally diverse group of people. The rationale

2NURSING ASSIGNMENT
behind giving this knowledge to newly placed staff is that language and communication barrier
significantly affects the patients quality of health care received by these people. Language
communication problems often lead to patient dissatisfaction, poor compliance to treatment and
low quality of care (Flores 2014). To mitigate such negative experience for patients, increasing
the culturally competency in care is considered important. The communication strategies to
understanding the culture and non-verbal cues of different patients group is likely to enhance the
quality and safety provisions in care. All efforts taken in the area of promoting culturally
competent communication is likely to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the receipt of care
(Kohn-Wood & Hooper, 2014).
Cultural competence has been promoted extensively in recent years. With the correct
information available to staffs regarding the importance of cultural competency and the strategies
needed to improve culturally competent communication, conflicting situations can be avoided in
health care. It will lead to lesser error and inconvenience for the health care staffs and experience
of biasness in the delivery of care can be implemented. This is likely to increase the trust of
patients with the health care system and better compliance with treatment regimen. This will
eventually reduce the burden of the health care system (Renzaho et al., 2013).

3NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Reference
Australians Together. (2017). [online] Australians Together. Available at:
http://www.australianstogether.org.au/stories/detail/the-gap-indigenous-disadvantage-in-
australia [Accessed 17 Sep. 2017].
Betancourt, J. R., Green, A. R., Carrillo, J. E., & Owusu Ananeh-Firempong, I. I. (2016).
Defining cultural competence: a practical framework for addressing racial/ethnic
disparities in health and health care. Public health reports.
Flores, G. (2014). Families facing language barriers in healthcare: when will policy catch up
with the demographics and evidence?. The Journal of pediatrics, 164(6), 1261-1264.
Kohn-Wood, L., & Hooper, L. (2014). Cultural competency, culturally tailored care, and the
primary care setting: Possible solutions to reduce racial/ethnic disparities in mental health
care. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 36(2), 173-188.
Renzaho, A. M. N., Romios, P., Crock, C., & Sønderlund, A. L. (2013). The effectiveness of
cultural competence programs in ethnic minority patient-centered health care—a
systematic review of the literature. International Journal for Quality in Health
Care, 25(3), 261-269.