The Impact of Culture on Caring - Coursework Example

Running Head: Culture and Caring The Impact of Culture on Caring Nursing Today The nursing profession is one of the most popular professions in our world today. A nurse is usually knowledgeable in the medical and technical aspect of their profession, but it isn’t a given that they would be good when it comes to human relations, since this isn’t really a given among the people in the profession. But it has been proven that being good with dealing with people is a skill a nurse should know since it is essential in their work when dealing with various kinds of patients (Fox, et al, 1990). Caring and One’s Background Leininger (1984) once wrote that caring is nursing and nursing is caring. This is why some nurses who have been interviewed and quoted say that caring is the basic foundation of their profession, being able to connect and sympathize with a patient, at the same time offering assistance and necessary attention. Nurses, or anyone in a profession that requires him or her to deal with different people, have to be able to show a certain amount of care to the person they are attending to. Caring, though, isn’t something that’s being taught in the majority of courses offered in college. The ability to care is has been observed to be manipulated by one’s surroundings, despite previous claims that caring for someone is independent of environmental factors. Environment and upbringing affect one’s ability to care to a certain extent. But, despite the lack of care and sympathy, this doesn’t prevent one from choosing that certain profession that he or she feels appropriate for one’s self. Some people disregard this important aspect altogether. We have to take into account that a person’s capacity to care is greatly affected by the environment he or she is immersed in. An article concerning the culture of caring in an academic environment was written based on a study done on a population of 1503 students and 92 teachers. The schools were ranked according to achievement. The highest ranking school taught academics with a culture of caring incorporated resulting in individuals with high prosocial behaviors and low rates of antisocial behaviors. The lowest ranking school had a very formal and rigid system resulting in higher cases of antisocial behaviors among its students (Shan, 1999). This just proves that a higher level of caring and social awareness is essential to one’s success, especially to those who are already working, more so, if your profession deals with a large amount of human relations and social interaction. Nursing students in third world countries choose the said profession in hopes of being able to work in foreign countries. It has been the economically-wise choice for young individuals who want a better life for themselves and their family living in a third world country currently suffering from recession. They are taught how to handle the patients, immersing them in different medical situations, teaching them the basics of their profession. After passing their requirements and the examinations, they would take on the world. Most of these nurses do end up working abroad. With the experience offered and them being able to pass the examinations, maybe nursing would be easy anywhere in the world. But we live in a multiracial and multicultural world. Different places have different people with different ailments and ways of dealing with such. Even handling them would have to be different. Another certain concern is this: their capacity to be able to sympathize and offer that certain emotional support to the patient they are tending to. Of course, examinations do not measure this. The colleges offering BS Nursing does not even take that to account. The caring part of a would-be nurse is usually deemed to be built-in. That is no longer the concern of their instructors, professors, and of the college they graduated from. Nursing text books and manuals have been devoid of the observations and studies concerning the effect of care and culture in nursing. Maybe it has been deemed unimportant before but incorporating such things in nursing curricula would be of big help to our future nurses (Leininger, 1997). Transcultural Nursing Madeleine Leininger (1991) made researches and wrote multiple articles concerning caring and transcultural nursing. Leininger defines this as the humanistic and scientific area of formal study in nursing which focuses on the diversity of cultures with respect to a human’s welfare and health. Transcultural nursing increases a nurse’s knowledge and awareness in order to be able to work efficiently as a nurse wherever he or she may be assigned. Nursing has to go beyond being able to know what disease a patient has based on certain medical symptoms and being able to know what the necessary solution to these ailments is. People in this profession must go beyond the academic aspect of their job and be fully aware about how to handle a patient depending on culture, race, and values. It is almost impossible to have a nurse who will have a background that mirrors the one of his/her patient. Each person has a different set of values and beliefs based on his/her upbringing and environment. So, a nurse, being one who has to meet and collaborate with people of different backgrounds must have a high level of cultural awareness to be effective as both a nurse and emotional support to a patient in dire need of assistance. He or she must be able to understand her own worldly views as well as that of the patient to avoid prejudice and certain misconceptions that could be linked to their culture and background differences. The nurse must fully understand the patient’s background to provide the appropriate care and help needed which is in line with the patient’s culture and beliefs because certain ailments or medical conditions are caused by health practices highly influenced by one’s culture (Transcultural Nursing, 1997). Certain members of the Faculty of Health and Caring Science, Institute of Nursing, in the The Sahlgrenska Academy, Göteborg University in Sweden have conducted an open-ended survey on ten nurses regarding the development of caring in the perioperative culture. The findings showed that the nurses must be able to connect with their patients and create a certain relationship that allows the person being attended to to be comfortable and perceive the attending nurse as someone trustworthy, maintaining a compassionate atmosphere during their time together. In this process of connecting, the relationship must be able to safeguard the patient’s welfare as well as the nurse’s as well (Rudolfsson, et al, 2007). Conclusion Before being able to truly and completely care for a person who is in need of help, one must be able to fully understand him or her as an individual. This is a humanistic approach on the nursing profession, something essential in the improvement of today’s nurses and their performance in the workplaces. It was mentioned earlier that nursing students from the third world countries, at a certain time, were being sent out to work abroad after passing the examinations, letting them come in contact with people of totally different cultures bound by a different set of social rules. But it is not necessary for a nurse to leave his or her own hometown to experience such diversity and put his or her knowledge on transcultural nursing to the test. Economically underdeveloped countries, commonly termed as third world countries, have enough of the diversity in ethnicity thus still being able to allow nurses to experience a colorful and challenging working experience. Third world countries are homes to various races and ethnic groups, offering nurses who work in such countries the challenge to handle people from various walks in life (Unknown, 1997). Overall, culture affects the way we care about others and how we believe we should be cared for. It is a human behavior easily manipulated by one’s society and environment. It is supposed to be considered an important topic to be included in the current nursing curricula to educate the future nurses-to-be about social interactions that have to deal with culture, ethnicity, and race. Nursing goes beyond medical technicalities. It is a profession that requires that certain ability to care for another individual in ways that he or she deserves. Because, as Madeleine Leininger (1984) has stated, caring is nursing and nursing is caring. References Fox, R.C., Aiken, L.H., Messikomer, C.M. (1990). A disease of society: Cultural responses to AIDS. The Milbank Quarterly, 68(2), 226. Leininger, M. (1997). Journal on Transcultural Nursing,8(2). Retrieved on July 9, 2009 from http://tcn.sagepub.com/ Leininger, M. (1985). Qualitative research methods in nursing. New York: Grune & Straton. Leininger, M. (1991). Transcultural nursing: the study and practice field. Imprint, 38(2), 55-66. Rudolfsson G, von Post I, Eriksson K. (2007). The development of caring in the perioperative culture: nurse leaders perspective on the struggle to retain sight of the patient. Retrieved on July 9, 2009 from http://www.nursingcenter.com/Library/JournalArticle.asp?Article_ID=745217 Shann, Mary H. (1999). Academics and a culture of caring: the relationship between school achievement and prosocial and antisocial behaviors in four urban middle schools. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 10 (4), 390- 413. Transcultural Nursing (1997). Retrieved on July 9, 2009 from http://www.culturediversity.org/ Read More