Cultural Competence in Nursing - Essay Example

? Cultural Competence in Nursing Introduction Cultural competence is a conceptual framework that helps caregivers to, appreciate, understand and be in a position to work with people from diverse cultures (Tseng &Streltzer, 2008). Cultural competence is awareness and acceptance of cultural differences. However, cultural competence in health care is a process in which the nurses strive with an aim of achieving the platform to work efficiently in the cultural context of a chronically ill patient, the family, and the community from a diversified ethnic/cultural structure. The main goal of culturally competent health care services is to offer effective health care to each patient, regardless of race, ethnicity, cultural background, English proficiency or literacy (Tseng &Streltzer, 2008). This paper will examine how cultural competence could be applicable to nursing care of the chronically ill patient and family, and how it could help eliminate health disparities for the chronically ill patients in the United States. How cultural competence can be applicable to nursing care of the chronically ill patient and family. Cultural competence is a dynamic and a lifetime learning process of understanding the culture, behavior, language and other factors that may hinder progress between a nurse and a chronically ill patient and family. Therefore, a professional nurse needs specific knowledge about the chronically ill patient, families and the community within (Kersey- Matusiak, 2013). Cross-cultural practice begins with a thorough assessment of the physical, psychological and cultural foci as the basis of the planning of care. The cultural focus of assessment entails examining the social cultural, ethical and sociopolitical features that are uniquely situated within the health-illness continuum of diverse clients (Jeffreys, 2010). Inherent in effective assessment is cross-cultural communication skills, utilized to maximize common understanding and shared meaning of the health-illness encounter of the culturally diverse client. There are numerous ways that cultural competence could be applicable to nursing care. First, nurses can establish a trusting relationship with the chronically ill patient and its family through open and sensitive communication, active listening and respect of client’s cultural beliefs and practices (Kersey- Matusiak, 2013). Such perceptions are very common in the United States because a bigger percent of the citizens are Christians who believe in God or a higher power. This concept applies to the chronically ill and the families who at most times may strongly belief that their chronic illness could e a sort of test and that through God’s intervention the illness will eventually be treatable. This means that this chronically ill patient focuses on inner strength and health care givers should fully apply their cultural competence by supporting the patient and its family’s cultural beliefs. More so, nurses and health care givers can obtain focused information about client’s presenting illness and his perception of causes of illness and beliefs about cultural treatment modalities (Jeffreys, 2010). This concept usually applies to patients or families of the chronically ill patients who believe in non-biomedical healing tradition. These individuals strongly believe that traditional medicine could be more effective to biomedical medication. A competent health giver or nurse should understand this cultural concept by understanding the chronically ill patient or his family’s wish. Ideally, culturally competence approach would put up ways to communicate with chronically ill patients about their perception of their conditions, concerns and fears about a particular medication. Hence, physicians and caregivers could play a crucial timely role in addressing social cultural barriers to care by following culturally competent approaches to decision support (Jeffreys, 2010). Cultural competence can also assist patients to manage their own illnesses by providing educational information to chronically ill patients using appropriate languages and appropriate levels of health literacy (Kersey- Matusiak, 2013). In addition, self-management strategies and advice could consider key issues that have a relation to patients’ social context. These issues include their physical environment and ability to exercise, the availability of healthy food, and the cultural customs and traditions that influence their exercise and dietary patterns. Importance of CLAS (CLAS) is referred to as the culturally and linguistically appropriate services, whose intention is to advance health equity, improve health quality and assist in eliminating health care disparities by establishing a blue print for health and health care organization (Rose, 2011). CLAS is important in numerous ways. CLAS provides equitable, effective, respectful and understandable quality care and services that respond to health literacy, diverse cultural health beliefs and practices, preferred languages and other different communication needs. In addition, CLAS recruits, promotes and support a culturally and linguistically diverse leadership, governance and workforce that respond to the population in the service area. CLAS helps a nation meet its future health care needs by ensuring that all people entering the health care system receive equitable and effective treatment. CLAS helps to increase the diversity in healthcare management by calling on health organization to recruit, retain and promote diverse staff and leadership. It also helps to promote cultural and linguistic competency by providing health organizations and professionals with guidance on implementing culturally and linguistically appropriate areas of governance, leadership, and workforce (Rose, 2011). It also implements culturally and linguistically appropriate services in communication and language assistance as well as engagement, continuous improvement and accountability. CLAS also provides a blue print with which health organizations and professionals may provide effective, understandable and respectful services. More so it helps in eliminating disparities by offering a framework for treating individuals with respect and in accordance with the culture and language that helps to increase patient satisfaction, personalize care, improve adherence, build rapport, and develop a trusting relationship (Rose, 2011). How cultural competent care can eliminate health disparities for the chronically ill patients in the United States. Disparities in U.S. health care sector resulted from a complicated mixture of access problems and systemic quality, which intertwined with historic injustices. The many dimensions of health disparities include race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and geography. Therefore, it is critically important for policymakers to define the problem appropriately so that the solutions will be in a position to address the intended goal, which is health security for all regardless of socioeconomic characteristics. More so, health care providers needs to rise up and acquire cultural skills and desire in order to deliver high quality technical and interpersonal health care to a diverse population, which in turn reduce healthcare disparities. First, the caregivers need to build close relationships with their patients in order to address issues that are affecting the chronically ill patient. According to IOM, interactive communication and awareness is able to upgrade the efficiency of health care givers, which will assist in making accurate diagnosis, prevent patients from being exposed to avoidable risks that might be acquired from diagnostic procedures, enable care providers to access a transparent consent and enable patients to freely, participate in clinical decision-making (Norman-Major &Gooden, 2012). For instance, a patient who has a chronic illness such as diabetes must somehow “own” the illness so that the patient can be in a position to effectively managing it. This means that caregivers can assist with high-quality recommendations and treatment, but on the other hand, patients must act on the given recommendations appropriately (Dreachslin et al, 2013). They must stop the unhealthy lifestyle by not smoking, exercise, eat right, take their medication, and strictly monitor their blood sugar. In addition, effective communication and interaction between health care givers and their chronically ill patients is essential because it delivers high-quality care (Norman-Major &Gooden, 2012). Statistics from the National Adult Literacy Survey claims that approximately ninety million U.S. adults have trouble in reading written text. More statistics claim that patients with chronic illness and limited health literacy have less knowledge of managing diseases, compared to those with higher literacy level (Dreachslin et al, 2013). Such situations are commonly evident in the current society. For instance, a patient suffering from chronic illness like diabetes may tend to think that since diabetes is hereditary, there is no means of controlling it since other family members suffered from the disease and eventually died and so is his fate. In this respect, proper education through effective communication from the caregivers will be of crucial help to inform the chronically patient that insulin injection will greatly assist in controlling diabetes. Conclusion Chronic illnesses are terminal illnesses that needs accurate acceptance by the patients and their families. This means that the health care givers have a hard task of building a strong relationship with the patients in order to understand their likes and innermost views and likes. The outcome from the chronically ill patients lays the platform for the caregivers to deliver the best and efficient services as well as help in eradicating health disparities starting from individual levels (Norman-Major &Gooden, 2012). References Dreachslin, J. L., Gilbert, M. J., & Malone, B. (2013). Diversity and cultural competence in health care: A systems approach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Jeffreys, M. R. (2010). Teaching cultural competence in nursing and health care: Inquiry, action, and innovation. New York: Springer Pub Co. Kersey-Matusiak, G. (2013). Delivering culturally competent nursing care. New York: Springer Pub. Co. Norman-Major, K.A., & Gooden, S.T. (2012). Cultural Competency for Public Administrators. M.E. Sharpe, 2012 Rose, P. R. (2011). Cultural competency for health administration and public health. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett. Tseng, W.-S., & Streltzer, J. (2008). Cultural competence in health care. New York: Springer. Read More