Cultural Intelligence And Capability
Questions:
This essay requires you to demonstrate your understanding of Cultural Competency in health care practice, including application of knowledge to practice within a chosen scenario.
The Essay Will Include The Following:
- Identify your own cultural values and privileges (regardless of your culture, race ethnicity)
- A reflection of your own cultural values and privileges including an explanation of why self-reflection is essential prior to approaching diverse clients
- Application of a strengths-based approach to culturally competent care including rationale, that demonstrates respect for diversity and celebrates difference (can be integrated into the following discussion)
- Consideration of cultural needs when delivering culturally competent care to a person from one of the following groups, who is preparing to undergo a general health assessment. (the person is waiting to undergo the assessment, do not complete the actual general health assessment):
Answers:
Introduction:
Culturally competent nursing is one of the most important aspects of healthcare. It has become one of the recent concerns in every healthcare industry of all nations as every nation has become tolerable of diverse population coming from different parts of the world (Moore et al. 2017 pp: 320). Along with the growth of the numbers of diverse population, it has become extremely important for healthcare professionals to develop skills which respect the needs of the patients of different cultures and also providing them with care that aligns with their cultural preferences and inhibitions. Researchers are of the opinion that cultural respect is very important for the reduction of health disparities (Gallagher and Polanin 2015 pp: 337). They are also of the opinion that culturally competent nursing is helpful in the improvement of the access to high quality healthcare which is in turn respectable and responsive to patient’s needs. Nurses in all these scenarios, should respond to the changing demographics of their patients so that they can offer culturally sensitive care (Noble et al. 2014 pp 90). This assignment will mainly highlight the different components that nurses should incorporate in their care practices for students so that they provide best care for culturally diverse client. A case scenario would be taken which would mainly help in acting as an example bout how nurses should handle different situation when culturally diverse patients are admitted to the wards.
Case Scenario:
A middle aged married woman of the Islam religion was admitted to the ward after she had a fall in her garden. She had faced a skin tear and wounds in her hand and on her head which had resulted in loss of large amount of blood. She was partially unconscious but was able to respond and talk feebly. She was brought here by her husband who complained about similar symptoms of nausea and vertigo often. The nurse in charge in the emergency department was a male healthcare member who immediately advised for blood transfusion due to loss of heavy blood. She was wearing a hijaab which needed to be removed in order to undergo the stitching of her skin tears as well as the dressing of the wounds. It created a huge issue in the ward as many of the activities that were conducted by me and my nurse colleague were prevented either by her husband or also by his wife. The first issue that was noted was they complained that they could not allow exposure of the body of the patient in place of a male healthcare member which was against the norms. Secondly another concern was that she was also not allowed to take blood from any sources that are not of the same religion. Both the issues seemed to be quite disturbing for us as it interrupted the smooth flow of the treatment which we usually conduct every day. Moreover as they were not been able to communicate in English, it was really making difficult for us to make the patient or her husband aware of the emergency of the situation. Moreover, later they also complained that we were not respectable to them as we had talked with them with eye contact which was not liked by them. After an hour, more than 8 members of his family came to visit in the hospital that wanted to meet their patient but were not allowed to as emergency patients are not subjected to interaction with more than one family member. All these made them upset stating that their feelings and emotions were not respected as they were form different religion. We got very upset with the entire situation the entire episode of the handling of the patient and his family members were frustrating to us as we were facing several interruptions in every arena of the assessments of her health.
Importance Of Cultural Competency:
After severe criticism of the approach that we had taken for her assessments by the nursing mentor we were able to understand the mistakes we conducted in her assessments. Different cultures have their own norms and traditions and the core of nursing profession highlights the importance of respecting patients’ cultural preferences in such a way so that the care they provide maintains autonomy, dignity and respect of culture of that patient (Long 2014 pp: 475). Researchers have defined the term culture as the thoughts, communications, customs, beliefs, values, actions as well as ins
