Culturally Competent Care

Culturally Competent Care

Culturally Competent Care

Culture

It is important to develop a good understanding of the word culture before we can go ahead to define and explain culturally competent care. Culture encompasses the generally observed way of life by a society. One of the key foundations of culture is the ethnic makeup of the society. The worldview held by the people has an influence on the cultural practices, which evolve and develop over the course of time. External events and experiences allow people to grow at a personal and professional level. This concept is carried onto the health care system with the introduction of a shared vision held by a team. This team maintains a coherent view of competency, which forms a culturally competent healthcare system. The National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties (NONPF) maintains a written document to serve as a blueprint to integrate the principles of cultural competence into the nurse practice.

Cultural Competence

The According to the NONPF, a nurse exhibits the principles of cultural competence when all the humans are treated equally without discriminating on the basis of cast, color, age, gender or religious inspirations. The patients are provided with a choice to receive care from a specific provider, or to decline care all-together. The nurses need to acknowledge their biases as it interferes with the ability of the nursing practitioner to deliver high quality health care to the patients. The nurses interact with members of the other culture and respect their cultural differences while taking account of the preferences held by the members of a specific culture. Nursing practitioner is expected to develop educational material that allows the patients speaking different language or possessing cultural beliefs not prevalent in the health care system. Therefore, the nursing practitioners help the patients to receive high levels of healthcare within the boundaries of a health system that is formed in a dominant culture.

Personal Values

Since nursing professionals working in a culturally competent care environment need to work with their peers. Clarifying the values that they hold close to their hearts allows them to work in synergy with others who might have different aspirations in comparison to them. Once all the members in a health care institution have developed a good understanding of their individual values, they can find the values that are congruently present among them. Whenever differences come along, self-reflection is used as a tool to find a middle ground for mutually held values in order to avoid conflicting situations. In traditional health care systems, leadership was considered as the sole responsibility of the senior medical professionals. The autonomy was decreased as we move down the hierarchy from physician to non-physician assistants, and midlevel providers. Similarly, males are considered to be in dominated position in the healthcare domain. However, the nursing staff is considered to be in an oppressed state. These issues are resolved by the culturally competent care environment where all the members work in a culturally harmony by settling their differences through a set of schedules ...