Cultural Sensitivity in Nursing - Assignment Example

? Cultural Sensitivity Introduction We have a huge number of challenges that are associated with professional communication in relation to cultural sensitivity of some given cultures. They could be looked at in terms of when cultures do clash. Various methods and modules have been researched and proposed to help guide nurses in dealing with these problems while carrying out their sacred duty of caring for the sick. Culture could be seen as those learned aspects of a people comprising of their values, norms in practice, beliefs in life, and their lifestyle or way of life, factors which do highly influence the way such individuals of the given cultural group think, make decisions and actin in their setting. As a requirement, client centered care does place much emphasis on the nurses to put into consideration the cultural practices of their clients or patients and the culture of nursing and together find a way out on how these two separate cultures do affect the relationship between the patient and nurse or nurse-patient relationship. Various scholars have come up with good and comprehensively researched works on cultural sensitivity in nursing practices. We also have a guideline for this field dubbed the Professional Communication Cultural Sensitivity Guide which could help give necessary and useful information to a nursing professional. It is however important to note that even with all the proposed guidelines and key principles, there is no single acceptable way of dealing with all cultural diversities because of the unique aspects of individuals and cultures themselves. The only constant is that the needs of the client come first! Nurses should therefore work hard and smarter in providing a culturally sensitive care by recognizing how their perceptions with those of the client could be both similar and different. This paper thus seeks to highlight key points with short discussion based on an article presented by a scholar, Deborah Dysart-Gale PhD, RN dubbed “Cultural Sensitivity beyond Ethnicity: A Universal Precautions Model” on the same. Culturally Sensitive Health Care (Article Review) Research has dwelt on the healthcare related needs of certain chosen ethnic groups and linguistic minorities. This approach has been noted to present the practitioner with the risk of basing her or his work on essentialized and or stereotyped accounts of a given cultural group and in this regard end up overlooking the specific needs of special groups such as elderly, gay, and physically challenged, among others which are important groups in cross-cultural nursing practices. For this reason and others, there is still debate as to how a professional nurse should best learn and provide the culturally sensitive care (Dysart-Gale, 2006. An approach of providing education of healthcare and cultural practices that are commonly encountered in healthcare practice is proposed. However, the difficulty comes in choosing such a group to study when we have uncountable number of cultures that are both diverse and unique. This scholar argues against this kind of approach and instead supposes that these nursing practitioners could be made aware of the factors that do influence cultural behaviors from a universal point of view. In this regard, the author concurs with the universal precautions model used as a tool that promotes infection control. In this approach, all practitioners are advised to approach all their patients as if these patients were quite infectious for the blood borne diseases and this call upon them to act conscientiously so as to prevent any form of contamination. In practice, it has been prompted that all patients do need health teaching as a way of imparting health literacy to them (Dysart-Gale, 2006. This model does give an opportunity to provide culturally appropriate care instead of the traditional practice of targeting specific characteristics of any one given culture. They thus do need to provide healthcare on the basis of an assumption of existence of cultural differences in all their clinical encounters and therefore; need to be conscientiously addressed by use of assessment and management of care plan. Cross-cultural healthcare research has established that nurses could avoid landing into cultural clash problems by being sensitive to the needs of the patients through application of a holistic approach to individual care when in practice. A nursing practitioner need to not only think of the patient as being Asian or African or White but also picture other important characteristics which include age, gender of the patient, education level, the geographical location and orientation of the patient, employment history, sexual orientations, and marital status, among others (Dysart-Gale, 2006. The works of Hofstede come in handy in this discussion. From his research and work, this scholar found out four dimensions inherent in cultural differences and noted them as power distance in that people within a society agree to the fact that distribution of power is unequal and thus each has its space due to the hierarchical differences such as seen in Arabian countries, Latin America and Malaysia. Interestingly, this cultural dimension is seen in the medical practice where high and low power exists whereby doctors, nurses and the appointed aides have their specified roles, dress codes, conduct, and competencies. Patient autonomy and the need for informed consent brings to fore low power distance. The patient’s expectations of this power distance could be very important in determining the success of healthcare provision; individualism and collectivism has to do with the relationship that exists between the individual patient and the group. In some aspects, a group is seen as an essential part of society and thus collective actions are respected, as opposed to individualism where the person has full autonomy, is seen as central and commands self-determination. For this purpose, individualist behavior of nursing practitioners and the collective patient aspect of culture and vice versa play a very critical role on how the two relate; uncertainty avoidance which majorly dictates the level of efforts one puts in anything. Simply put as the fear of risk. Patients with strong uncertainty avoidance backgrounds normally need clearly defined values and medical practices and would not go for experimental drugs. Dialogue is necessary in this case; and high and low masculinity which is based on the various gender stereotypes held by many communities across the world. It also affects the attitudes held by people towards science and other social achievements in terms of what the female gender can do as opposed to what a male gender can. When looking at these, some clinically significant issues such as emotional display of the client, authority levels, and roles played by individuals within family and society come into play (Dysart-Gale, 2006; Hofstede, 2001). Situation Indeed cultural orientations of patients play an important role in the communication between the patient and the nursing professional. The way a nursing profession communicates with the patient from a given social or cultural group matters more and could define success or failure. For that reason, the nursing practitioner needs to be culturally sensitive when dealing with his or her client so that cultural conflicts can be avoided. The most applicable situation in this analysis concerns a patient who is suffering from genital infections. As a practice in many cultures, the male patient can only be observed by a male practitioner. Conflict of cultural interests arises where a nurse has to attend to a patient of the opposite sex when such a patient believes that it is not culturally acceptable to do so. This situation could be made worse if the patient has a high social standing and thus there is power distance and high levels of uncertainty avoidance. These cases could be more prominent in Arabian and African countries. Addressing the cultural conflict by being sensitive to the values, beliefs and norms observed by this group of people could prove successful in the process of administering healthcare. In this regard, education on healthcare matters and challenges need to be given priority on such matters and the patient made aware of the need to be attended to. However, in cases where the patient still has reservations about the nursing professional attending to him or her, change of the nurse might be necessary to suit the patient’s needs. Thus, cross-cultural communication that is aimed at finding the solution could prove to be more effective than sticking to one’s assertions which might prove to be insensitive to the needs of the patient. Conclusion The practitioners need to assume the presence of a cultural difference and try assessing the potential effect of such a situation to the clinical practice. When a professional analyses the situation based on the identified cultural dimensions, it is easier for such a practitioner to understand the patient and put him or herself in a position where effective service delivery to the patient is ensured. References Dysart-Gale Deborah PhD, RN (2006) “Cultural Sensitivity beyond Ethnicity: A Universal Precautions Model. Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice, Vol.4 (1) Hofstede G. (2001) Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations across Nations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Read More