Description

Post A

1.- Nurses must consider the patient’s culture or ethnic background in care planning and delivery. Why is it equally important for us to be self-aware of personal beliefs about a patient’s country of origin? Provide scholarly evidence to support your statements.

It is important for nurses to know personal beliefs about a patient’s country of origin in order to provide personalized care to each patient and to increase adherence to treatment. Each culture has its own characteristics, for instance, in Japanese culture, silence means respect while in the American culture, silence can be interpreted as an unwillingness to cooperate with treatment. (Rittle, 2015).

2.- Discuss one personal strength identified in your survey results. How does this strength contribute to your cultural competence?

An identified strength of my assignment is that many of my friends or associates are different from me in age, gender, race, physical abilities, economic status, sexual orientation, and education. Something that I especially like about living in the USA and in particular, in Florida, is the cultural diversity. Sometimes when I sit down to eat lunch at work I look around and realize how diverse we are. I have coworkers from the Philippines, Afghanistan, Iran, Jamaica, England, Russia, Poland, China, Japan, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, India, Ghana, and many more. Meeting people of such diverse origins and delving into the peculiarities of each culture has helped me to learn to respect and appreciate each person for their human condition and not for their origin, economic situation, abilities, etc.

3.- Discuss a minimum of one weakness and identify two ways you can enhance cultural sensitivity or your competence at the bedside.

An identified weakness is that sometimes I am not as flexible as I should be and want the work to be done my way. One way I can correct this is to work on being more patient, I must learn to adapt to the peculiarities of each person and to understand that everyone has their way of completing her work. There is no better or worse way to do things, if not, there are different ways.

4.- Did the quiz reveal any other areas of improvement that were needed?

Yes, sometimes I have a very direct way of saying things and I am not very sensitive to the feelings of others. I think I should work on learning to moderate my words so as not to hurt other people’s feelings.

Bibliography

Rittle, C. (2015, December). Multicultural Nursing Providing Better Employee Care. Workplace Health & Safety, 63(12), 532-538. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2165079915590503

Post B

Health care providers, including nurses care for a vast array of patients from all different backgrounds and cultures. It would be exceedingly difficult to know every aspect of every culture or ethnic background, however it is possible to know the most frequently treated in our care (Andrews et al., 2020, p. 43). Nurses generally spend the most time with patients when they are being treated in the hospital setting so it is important that the nurse can communicate with the patient they are treating especially when it comes to educating patients at discharge. While it is important for the nurse to have some knowledge regarding the patient’s culture, it is equally important for nurses to be self-aware of personal beliefs about the patient’s culture especially when the two cultures may not align with one another. It is essential that the patient feels that they can understand and trust their healthcare professionals with their care and feel valued, which leads to better health outcomes for the patient (Lin et al., 2021, p.2).

One personal strength that I identified in my survey results is that I am sensitive to other people’s feelings and I am aware of how they are reacting when I am speaking to them. I am an empathetic person by nature and try to make everyone feel as comfortable as possible when they are around me including my patients of other cultures.

One weakness I have is not knowing enough about the Hispanic culture, I treat a large population of the Hispanic culture where I work and know little about all the aspects of the culture. I am going to try to learn more about the Hispanic culture during this class and after to expand my knowledge and to be more understanding of the patients that I care for. Secondly, I can talk to the patients more and listen and pay close attention to their stories instead of just using the translator services for surgical consents.

This quiz did reveal that I have so much to learn about other cultures beside my own. I am interested in learning and to be a better listener.

References

Andrews, M., Boyle, J. S., & Collins, J. (2020). Culturally competent nursing care.

In Transcultural concepts in nursing care (8th ed., pp. 31-54). Wolters Kluwer.

Lin, H., Guo, J., Chen, H., Liao, L., & Chang, L. (2021). Cultural competence among pre-

graduate nursing students, new graduate nurses, nurse mentors, and registered nurses: A

comparative descriptive study. Nurse Education Today, 97,

104701. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2020.104701