Understanding and implementing culturally competent and culturally congruent care are the key factors for effective and excellent nursing care (Srivastava, 2007). However, health care provider’s roles and responsibilities in meeting health care needs of the clients in consideration to cultural perspective and diversity are getting more challenging and complicated due to increased number of people from a group of multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society, which, in turn requires health care providers to acknowledge and understand variations of cultural healthcare beliefs, values and practices.
Transcultural nursing is essential in the process of nursing care because of the different factors, which includes increasing diversity and multicultural identities, emergent use of health care equipment that occasionally dispute the cultural ethics and beliefs of the clients and a rise in feminism and gender issues (Andrews & Boyle, 2008).
Maier-Lorentz (2008) states that the fundamental aspect of healthcare is transcultural nursing since culturally competent nursing care help guarantee patient satisfactions and health beneficial outcome.
According to the Royal College of Nursing (2009), providing care with respect to health and illness based on the expectations of the people’s values, beliefs and practices corresponding with culture is the focal point of transcultural care.
Influenced by the principles and theories of transcultural nursing, the author defines transcultural nursing as a discipline of culturally care for individuals, families, groups and communities representing different cultural lifestyle, values, habits, life process, beliefs and practices. Furthermore, the author believes that the aims of transcultural nursing are to ...
... middle of paper ...
...attain cultural competence and provide adequate cultural care, healthcare provider should develop the desire to achieve congruent care, be aware to any personal biases and prejudices, acknowledge and support other person’s cultural belief and practices, avoid stereotyping and cultural imposition and most importantly identify and overcome the barriers to effective assessment and intervention. Understanding one’s own culture, being supportive, appreciative and sensitive to other culture and differences are the key factors to achieve cultural competence.
The author recommends that aside from being focused to care provider’s cultural competency and cultural assessment, transcultural nursing theories and concepts also needs to develop ways on how to avoid cultural negligence, overcome personal biases and resolve cultural barriers that may affect quality nursing care.
In closing I would like to quote the Transcultural Nurse’s Prayer, by Dr. Lennininger, which briefly defines the meaning of transcultural nursing.
...the formal and explicit cognitive practice learned through educational institutions. This type of practice is focused on the professional knowledge and care that nurses are taught in a educational establishment. Nurses provide (McFarland and Wehbe-Alamah 2015, p.14).assistive and supportive care for patients, along with the proper training to improve a patient 's health, prevent illnesses, and/or help with the dying. Taking the Culture Care Theory and ethnonursing research methods helps a nurse in the transcultural field provide culturally congruent care. This gives the nurses the ability to expand their knowledges and apply or teach their discoveries when interacting with a variety of diverse cultures. The form to obtain these new discoveries is presented in the most naturalistic and open way possible to keep a comforting relationship between the nurse and patient.
... L. D., & Paulanka, B. J. (2008). Transcultural health care: a culturally competent approach (3rd ed.). Philadelphia: F.A. Davis.
Environmental justice can influence the population’s health. This environmental justice is relevant to nursing, because awareness brings changes and can save and improve many lives. When a person in a hospital or in a community setting is affected by a health problem, the entire community is at risk, knowing the population is lack of knowledge and have limited access to understand health care system. Therefore, a solution to eliminating cultural disparities is optimal for immigrant communities. In conformity with the Journal of Transcultural Nursing journal, nurses need to follow 12 steps to have a successful result when integrating cultural competence in the health care environment: social justice, critical reflection, knowledge of cultures, culturally competent practice, cultural competence in the health care systems and organizations, patient advocacy and empowerment, multicultural workforce, education and training in culturally competent care, cross-cultural communication, cross-cultural leadership, policy development, a...
This essay will focus on outlining the fundamental principles of cultural diversity and how effective nursing interventions are used when providing an adequate amount of care for an individual from a culturally diverse background and how this may collide with the nursing therapeutic engagement. This essay will give the reader an insight upon culture whilst giving a significant explanation of cultural differences within a health setting. The patient’s real name will not be used and will be referred to as Mr. X. This is in line with the Nursing and midwifery Council 2008 (NMC, 2008) requirements to maintain confidentiality at all times.
The theoretical framework that I used for this paper is Leininger's Sunrise Model. It describes the factors that have to be assessed in order to provide competent trans cultural care for a culture. These include educational factors, economic factors, political and legal factors, cultural values and life ways, kinship and social factors, religious and philosophical factors, technological factors, generic or folk systems within a cultural care worldview (Leininger's, 1991).
Nurses have the obligation to be culturally competent and to provide culturally congruent patient care practices. This is importance to nursing profession and the practice implications of culturally competent care have been supported through evidence-based data. It is important to note that care is the foundation of nursing practice; and the practice
Leininger was the first nursing theorist to focus on the fact that different cultures have different caring behaviors and thus require different treatment and coined the term “culturally congruent care.” Leininger’s was a true visionary and her work developed into a movement called Transcultural Nursing. Her revolutionary work embodies the essence of holistic caring in the nursing profession and she changed the paradigm of nursing at a time when society did not celebrate cultural differences to include care that is individualized to the patient. This has influenced my personal philosophy and assisted me to be authentically present, more able to be empathetic, and considerate of my patients in order to create a healing environment, and better outcomes for the
Douglas, Rosenkoetter, Pacquiao, Callister, Hattar-Pollara, Lauderdale, Milstead, Nardi, & Purnell (2014) outline ten guidelines for implementing culturally competent care; knowledge of cultures, education and training in culturally competent care, critical reflection, cross-cultural communication, culturally competent practice, cultural competence in health care systems and organizations, patient advocacy and empowerment, multicultural workforce, cross-cultural leadership, and evidence-based practice and research. One specific suggestion I will incorporate is to engage in critical reflection. This is mentioned both by Douglas, et al. (2014) and Trentham, et al. (2007) as an important part of cultural competency. I will do this by looking at my own culture, beliefs, and values and examining how they affect my actions. I will use this information to better inform my day to day practice when working with patients with a different culture than my
Transcultural nursing requires us to care for our patients by providing culturally sensitive care over a broad spectrum of patients. The purpose of this post is to describe cultural baggage, ethnocentrism, cultural imposition, prejudice, discrimination, and cultural congruence. I will also give an example of each term to help you understand the terminology related to nursing care. I will definite cultural self-assessment and explain why it is valuable for nurses to understand what their own self-assessment means. Finally, I will describe the five steps to delivering culturally congruent nursing care and how I have applied these concepts in my nursing practice.
Providing culturally competent care is a vital responsibility of a nurse’s role in healthcare. “Culturally competent care means conveying acceptance of the patient’s health beliefs while sharing information, encouraging self-efficiency, and strengthening the patients coping resources” (Giddens, 2013). Competence is achieved through and ongoing process of understanding another culture and learning to accept and respect the differences.
Cultural competence can be defined as using the ability of one’s awareness, attitude, knowledge and skill to effectively interact with a patient’s many cultural differences. Madeline Leininger, a pioneer on transcultural nursing describes it this way; “a formal area of study and practice focused on comparative human-care differences and similarities of the beliefs, values and patterned lifeways of cultures to provide culturally congruent, meaningful, and beneficial health care to people” (Barker, 2009, p. 498). The importance of cultural diversity in healthcare allows for the delivery of appropriate cultural autonomy. Showing respect for others will lead to trust between nurse and patient which in turn improves healing and health.
As a nurse strive to provide culturally sensitive care, they must recognize how their client's and their perceptions are similiar as well as different. Nurse enhance their ability to provide client-centered care by reflecting on how their beliefs and values impact the nurse-patient relationship. To provide appropriate patient care, the nurse must understand her/his culture and that of the nurse profession. Cultural biases can be particularly difficult to identify when the nurse and client are of a similar cultural backgroup. When we recognize and know a culture, we will know what is right for our patient, and thus may impose our own values on the client by assuming our values are their values. Recognizing differences a present an opportunity not only to know the other, but also to help gain a greater sense of self. In this paper, I will explain more about diversity and cultural competence in case study.
Leininger M. & McFarland M.R. (2002). Transcultural nursing: concepts, theories, research, and practice (3rd ed.). New York, New York: McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
There are eight reasons that transcultural nursing has become a necessary framework for the care we