Nursing Essay Example: Culturally Sensitive Care

Culture is a very crucial concept in providing patient care concerning the shared values, customs, and beliefs that commonly individual define a population or a group of learned responses. Therefore, culturally sensitive nursing care is one that offers healthcare that accommodates each regarding his/her unique beliefs, values, and cultural practices (Tucker et al., 2011). This makes the patients believe in specific types of treatments and makes them respond positively to the pains and illnesses associated with the care. Therefore, the level of cultural competency in nursing greatly relies on the reduction of health disparities while improving access to top-quality healthcare that accurately responds to patients' needs. Ideally, a culturally sensitive nursing care is applicable in the nursing profession in developing awareness about an individual's existence, feelings, beliefs, and the environment without inflicting an undue influence from others (Tucker et al., 2011). Therefore, the caregiver must adapt care that complies with the patient's culture based on the demonstration and understanding of the existing cultural differences within the context of an ethnically diverse setting. Hence, a culturally sensitive nursing care provides a link between the perceptions of clients on caregiver's cultural understanding and compliance with the recommended treatment guidelines that specify the existing differences related to race/ethnicity (Tucker et al., 2011).

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Cultural Assimilation

Understanding cultural assimilation enables the nurse to establish good relations with the host society by adopting the patients' native culture to relate better to the healthcare system. Therefore, it improves client outcomes and the provision of quality care. Therefore, a clear understanding of the cultural assimilation positively impacts on patient care based on how it supports a culturally competent delivery system. For example, it facilitates the incorporation of effective communication in nursing practice (CE, n.d). The assimilation further develops a sensitivity that allows nurses to recognize values and biases to familiarize themselves with existing cultural differences that may otherwise negatively affect clients. Generally, a clear understanding of the cultural assimilation allows nurses to comprehend the existing diversity between and among cultures to comprehensively consider others' points of view. This concept allows for flexibility and tolerance that eliminates judgmental issues that thwart the willingness to relinquish control in nursing practice (CE, n.d).

Patient Care Strategies

Nurses should use awareness and acceptance to address both personal and cultural preference of the patients inclusively. The two strategies will make nurses to honor the patients' beliefs and choices. For instance, awareness sensitizes nurses on cross-cultural issues and the best communication skills to help them identify personal biases that might compromise the therapeutic nursing relationship. Additionally, self-awareness will aid in clearly understanding the different perceptions and assumptions of clients about their cultural beliefs; thus, eliminating the caregiver's prejudices based on oppression, racism, discrimination, and stereotypes (Ferwerda, 2018).

Furthermore, acceptance is a vital patient care strategy that nurses can use to ensure the provision of culturally effective and sensitive care. Therefore, nurses should promote acceptance and personal love to instill solidarity with their patients. Remember that a nurse's presence and acceptance empowers the client in situations where chaos arise when long-term decisions need to be made to achieve hope, well-being, and a satisfying state of health (Ferwerda, 2018). This implies that acceptance enables the patient to articulate important actions of life to understand deterrents to health progress consciously. Therefore, the two strategies promote continued transformational behaviors that ensure that nurse's actions are geared towards improving the general health of the population regardless of its cultural beliefs and orientations.

Madeleine LeiningerLeininger greatly contributed to the provision of a culturally based nursing care. The assertion is based on the manner in which she advocated culturally congruent nursing that relies on perceptive, assistive, facilitative, and enabling decisions that comply with a specific group's cultural values, beliefs, and lifestyles (Betancourt, 2015). Therefore, Leininger's efforts were directed towards the achievement of beneficial and better health outcomes for individuals of either similar or diverse cultural backgrounds. She informed how nurse-patient relationships could result in a more satisfying creative design that caters for the well-being of the clients based on professional knowledge and ideas (Betancourt, 2015). As a result, Leininger theorizes nursing actions and decisions that can provide meaningful and holistic care to clients in regards to the group's cultural perspectives. Hence, her theory wholly relied on care that helps other cultural groups both real and anticipated needs that advance human circumstances of anxiety as regards to effective communication, gender issues, socioeconomic considerations, and interpersonal relationships (Betancourt, 2015).

Journal Article/Research Study

Rosenkoetter, M. M., Callister, L., Lauderdale, J. & Milstead, J. A. (2011). Standards of Practice for Culturally Competent Nursing Care: Update. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 22(4) 317-333. Retrieved 9/11/2018 from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jana_Lauderdale/publication/230720175_Standards_of_Practice_for_Culturally_Competent_Nursing_Care_Update_Journal_of_Transcultural_Nursing_224_317-333/links/5420421b0cf241a65a1c3785/Standards-of-Practice-for-Culturally-Competent-Nursing-Care-Update-Journal-of-Transcultural-Nursing-224-317-333.pdf

Rosenkoetter, Callister, Lauderdale & Milstead, (2011) assert that nurses should gain and understand the knowledge of the culture of a given group concerning values, beliefs, perspectives, and traditions to facilitate the achievement of health and wellbeing. This idea will adequately prepare nurses to gain continued education and training to enhance competent practices in the nursing context. Resultantly, the nurses will be engrossed in critical reflection of their values, beliefs, and cultural heritage to accurately apply nursing qualities appropriately towards the attainment of culturally congruent nursing care (Rosenkoetter, Callister, Lauderdale & Milstead, 2011).

Finally, understanding the cultural beliefs, values, and perceptions of a given group is a vital step towards the achievement of culturally competent nursing care. However, the attainment of the objective as mentioned earlier depends on a better understanding of the nurse-patient relationships to achieve improved client outcomes as regards the quality of care. Therefore, awareness and acceptance are two vital strategies applicable if competent nursing care is to be achieved about how Leininger's theories emphasize culturally congruent nursing.

References

Betancourt, D. (2015). Madeleine Leininger and the Transcultural Theory of Nursing. The Downtown Review, Volume 2, Issue 1, Article 1. EngagedScholarship@CSU Publishers. Retrieved 9/11/2018 from https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=tdr

CE. (n.d). Culturally Competent Nursing Care and Promoting Diversity C in Our Nursing Workforce. Retrieved 9/11/2018 from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b2e2/23cd6720a6cd6b1bf8bf76352c57113803ff.pdf

Ferwerda, J. (2018). How to Care For Patients from Different Cultures. [Last updated: September 15, 2016]. Nurse.org. Retrieved 9/11/2018 from https://nurse.org/articles/how-to-deal-with-patients-with-different-cultures/

Rosenkoetter, M. M., Callister, L., Lauderdale, J. & Milstead, J. A. (2011). Standards of Practice for Culturally Competent Nursing Care: Update. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 22(4) 317-333. Retrieved 9/11/2018 from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jana_Lauderdale/publication/230720175_Standards_of_Practice_for_Culturally_Competent_Nursing_Care_Update_Journal_of_Transcultural_Nursing_224_317-333/links/5420421b0cf241a65a1c3785/Standards-of-Practice-for-Culturally-Competent-Nursing-Care-Update-Journal-of-Transcultural-Nursing-224-317-333.pdf

Tucker, C. M., et al. (2011). Patient-Centered Culturally Sensitive Health Care: Model Testing and Refinement. Health Psychology: Official Journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association, 30(3), 342-50. Retrieved 9/11/2018 from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092156/