Culture Competent in Nursing Care

Introduction

The culturally competent nursing practice has increasingly, over the past thirty years, found its place as a mandatory, honored and respected aspect of nursing profession, requiring research, study and development. In the final analysis, cultural competence in nursing is about social justice. The demographics of the patient and nursing population in the U.S., coupled with wide health disparity between different nations and peoples who now populate the U.S., has necessitated this focus (Campinha-Bacote, 2005).

According to Smedley (et al, 2003), the principal goal of the advocates of cultural competence in health care is to increase equal treatment in the provision of health care services and reduce disparities by concentrating on the culturally and nationally specific health concerns of People of Color and other underserved populations. Indeed, as cultural competence has been increasingly viewed as integral to nursing in the U.S. context, the people of the world, as reflected in the proclamations of the United Nations, regard a culturally competent nursing practice as being central to health care delivery today (Expert Panel on Global Nursing and Health, 2010). For this reason, this study will rely, not only on U.S. sources, but on resolutions from the United Nations. Cultural competence in today’s world, in general, is defined as the ability to interact effectively and respectfully with people of different cultures, particularly in the contexts of human services, government, business and not-for-profit organizations, whose constituents, employees, customers and clients are of various nationalities and cultural backgrounds. Mercedes Martin and Billy Vaughn (2007) identify four components of cultural competence in t...

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...JE, Leininger, M, Leuning, C, Pacquiao, DF, Andrews, M, & Ludwig-Beyer, P.

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