Cultural Competence: A Case Study

After reading Dr. Galanti 's articles about culturally competent healthcare please answer the following questions: What did you gain from reading Dr. Galanti 's article? Dr. Galanti provides insight into the relationship between cultural diversity and heath care providers. Dr. Galanti’s briefly states the difference between “stereotype and generalization”. The author recognizes that generalization may be a key factor used by workers in the health care community to bring awareness and a better understanding of cultural differences among patients. The article explains that although cultures differ in values, traditions, and beliefs, there are questions (the 4’C’s of culture) that may open up the line of communication, between provider and

5. I have relatives who have only used south Asian home remedies any time they are sick. I’m sure they would prefer a doctor who would be familiar with these remedies and advise them accordingly when helping to treat them. This is just ONE EXAMPLE of the potential need to incorporate cultural competency into healthcare. Do you know anybody that would benefit from the any cultural competency efforts in healthcare?

Studies show that nurses must be culturally competent in order to provide optimal care for their patients. For example, nurses who have knowledge about a patient’s religious culture may not be alarmed when they walk into

Cultural Competence to me is an individual’s, professional’s, or organization’s ability to understand, work, assist, and interact with people from different cultures, ethnicities, religious beliefs, values, gender, age, other than their own. Cultural Competence means being sensitive and aware of the differences that people posses, and then educating one self on those differences to appropriately interact or help them. I believe that cultural competence is an ongoing process that is developed over time. Individuals can obtain the knowledge and skills needed to be culturally sensitive through participating in workshops and trainings, creating family, individual, and community partnerships, and working with people from different ethnic back

More and more Plans to move the health care system towards the goal of cultural competence is being realized due to the health implications of being stagnant (Seeleman et al, 2015). Greater morbidity and death from prolonged diseases are found amongst cultural and ethnic groups. The magnitudes can be higher monetary problems to greater activity restrictions.

To work effectively in a foreign community, it is crucial that short-term nurses have an understanding of culture, belief system, and their lifestyles. Nurses needs to be culturally competence to provide patient centered effective healthcare. Culture competence is the ability of healthcare professionals to understand the social, cultural and linguistic needs of patients to provide effective health care (Georgetown University Health Policy Institute, 2004).   A lack of culture competence can lead to poor patient outcome. For example, if a nurse has a poor understanding of a diabetic patient's diet, and food preference, that could inhibit the nurse's ability to educate patient to manage the disease.

These factors make up effective communication between patients and healthcare providers. As an increasingly multicultural society, it is highly important to overcome these barriers to provide safe and high-quality care for patients and their families (2014). When asked how nurses can provide culturally appropriate care for her and people of the same culture, Neufeld states they do not require different or special care. She then stopped to reminisce about her beliefs and teachings saying, “ the

When beginning this course, I had little knowledge of the depth of diversity found in our world today. I lived in a small town, which acted as a shelter from the harsh realities faced by many ethnicities, but also prevented me from experiencing cultural diversity. With my lack of background knowledge concerning diversity, I would say that my level of cultural competence was nearly non-existent. I had never been exposed to any ethnicities, other than my own, until moving to college. It wasn’t until moving away to college that I realized how naïve I was concerning the diversity of our nation.

This model represents the structure of culture care theory by relating the connection between anthropological and nursing beliefs and principles. Nurses apply this model to practice when making cultural evaluations of patients. This model connects the concepts of the theory with actual clinical practice, and at the same time it offers a universal approach to recognize values, beliefs, behaviors and community traditions. Sunrise model encompasses multiple aspects of culture such as spiritual, financial, social, education, legal and theoretical dimensions. Together with these factors, language and social environment does extensively have an effect on the service delivered by healthcare

The world is a diverse population, with people coming from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds. A person’s views, values, and traditions determine their daily needs and practices. So, healthcare providers face certain challenges and restrictions because a patient’s belief may inhibit professionals from providing the most effective care. Therefore, cultural competence is an important idea for healthcare providers to consider when understanding and respecting patients. Balcazar, Suarez-Balcazar, and Taylor-Ritzler (2009) noted in “Cultural competence:

The paper is written by Gloria Kersey-Matusiak, PhD, RD and focuses on culturally competent care among nurses. The paper tries to define the competent nursing care, explains it significance in our health care community, introduce a cultural assessment tool, and discusses how the knowledge of culturally competent care can be used in the practice. Introduction to the Culturally Competent Care Firstly, the paper introduces a series of important questions a nurse should ask him/her about the importance of cultural competence in patient 's care, the assessment tool which is more feasible to use according to each specific population, and how that knowledge would help to improve patient 's care and reduce healthcare disparities especially for minorities.

One of the point that captured my attention while reading the article(Cross, 1989) was that my parents expressed commitment in valuing diverse population, but had no clear plan in cultural competences .Always oppressed and marginalized. My parents taught me that even though we were a minority we could approximate the dominant group by social status and cultural assimilation (Cross,

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots” stated by Marcus Garvey. It is to one’s personal interpretation whether or not culture plays a factor in how one views others. Although some people argue that culture does not greatly affect how one views others and the world because one may have different personal insights that may not take cultural aspects into account; however, many insist that culture has a large impact on how one perceives others’ culture and the world because everyone is raised knowing only one culture, limiting one 's views to their culture. One factor that influences how people interpret others and the world is language. Knowing only one’s language provides some

There are specific strategies that help overcome cross cultural communication barriers. A newspaper article by Thena Information Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (2010, June 8) discusses cross‐cultural communication as a process of becoming aware of another culture's habits, actions and reasons behind behaviours. In this article the author indicates that cross-cultural communication always demands clear understanding of each other's feelings, emotions and sentiments which might be deeply-rooted in their respective cultural norms and values. Kai (2005) focuses on sensitivity to cultural diversity, stereotyping and prejudice, general skills of good communication, andd specific skills to negotiate communication barriers. In this article the author concludes that to communicate effectively, it is necessary to avoid stereotyping by responding to patients as individuals within their own cultural

Bridging Cultures (Cultural Intelligence) Cultural intelligence (CQ) defines a one’s ability to function appropriately across different cultures. Notably, the term was developed by Soon Ang and Lin Van Dyne as they were interested in finding out the impact of the intercultural performance. Arguably, the world is made up of people from different cultures, and they might either determine the success or failure of an individual.