Cultural Competency In Nursing

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Cultural Competency
Cultural competence for advanced practice nurses is defined as the willingness or the desire to understand another person’s culture, the ability to learn about a diverse cultural belief systems, and to work effectively as a healthcare professional understanding the dynamics of the patient’s culture as it relates to their relationships, care, and overall health. Awareness of one’s own culture, along with the understanding of other cultures, and how that relates to nursing care is essential to improve outcomes for patients (Kardong-Edgren et al., 2010). This paper will review a personal account of my cultural awareness and cultural beliefs. Cultural competence will be discussed as it relates to nursing theory and application …show more content…

My parents and grandparents had a very strong work ethic, along with strong beliefs about other cultures and races. I was raised to be a respectful of others, to believe in the American dream, and the live by the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matt. 7:12). Growing up in the 1960’s my parents were very protective, and I was not exposed to or aware of the civil unrest going on in our country. The only mention of ethnicity were generalizations of nationality: the Italians were good Catholics, the Polish were hard workers, or the German’s made good sausage. My maternal grandmother emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1923, and was discriminated against as a young Irish woman living in New York City. She had little tolerance for those who complained about cultural discrimination, she believed it was a rite of passage as an immigrant, and if you worked hard you would be rewarded. As a small child and young adult, my world was very small culturally. I lived in a small town, mostly white, and of the Christian faith. My family had a summer home in New Hampshire, therefore my travels were limited to the East Coast. Similar to the Chimamanda Adichie (TED Talks, 2009) discussion in the video “The Danger of a Single Story,” for most of my formative years, I had one story of culture, my

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