Culture Diversity in Nursing Care

The World as a Global Village

The world today is considered as a global village, this basically means that the modern society has people who can move about at any time to different places. This brings about the emergence of different people with different cultural backgrounds together thus calling for the essentiality of transcultural nursing in healthcare. A competent nurse should therefore have the commendable knowledge and skills applicable in cultural competency so that the culturally different patient can receive prompt and satisfying medical outcome. Like in Midwestern Primary Care Clinic, there is NPD Practitioner Role which uses the service line judgement that helps in collecting safeguarding data and identifying instances of LGBT client care that needs to be addressed (Felsentein, 2018).

History

Cultural Diversity in Nursing Care dates back in 1900s when public health nurses saw the need to care for the Europe immigrants that came from diverse cultural backgrounds, however, it was until in the 1940s that Madeleine Leininger saw the need of Nursing Care that relied on the culture background of the patient (Alluaigan, 2011).

Acknowledging Historical Injustices

A country like the United States has undergone through ethnocide of the nations and their cultures and genocides of the ethnic population like the native Latin Americans (Grandbois et al., 2012). It is due to such historical injustices that could make these Native Americans have inborn fear on the government institutions and agencies like nursing. Nurses that provide health care for such populations ought therefore to be sensible to the possible discernment from these due to such historical backgrounds.

Statistics

Considering the case of the United States, about 37 per cent of the population comprises of ethnic and racial minority and it is projected that by 2043 the minority will take the lead (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2018) yet the registered nurses from this population is about 19 per cent.

The 2000 census on disability shows that 49.7 million people have some type of long lasting condition or disability. It also shows that disability rates vary among the major racial and the ethnic groups.

Such statistics clearly indicates the need of a nurse to embrace culture Diversity in Nursing in dealing with such disabled population and also that the nurses from the majority race must attend to the health needs of the minority ethnic population (Waldrop & Stern, 2003).

Significant to Health Issues

The relevance of cultural diversity in nursing care arises due to the challenges from the culture diversity. Effective understanding of the clients and the betterment of the patient care can only be achieved when the health service providers overcome the barrier between the medicine cultures and the beliefs and norms comprising the client’s value system.

Culture groups like; people with disabilities, the poor, the ethnic minority, the LGBTs and those people with similar religious faith to the nurse are usually given less medical attentions for some reasons that can be avoided.

Role of the Nurse

The duty of the nurses is to provide skilled care to the growing population of patients with diverse cultural backgrounds. A nurse is therefore expected to adjust to adjust the understanding of the culture background of the client. It is only through Culture Diversity training that can make a nurse offer different viewpoints to the patient in for an effective administering of treatment. The culture skill will involve the power of the nurse to gather necessary cultural information pertaining to the patient to help in treatment.

Conclusion

Culture groups like; disabled, the poor, the ethnic minority, the LGBTs and those people with different religious faith have been considered as the need of nurses to embrace Culture Diversity. It is therefore upon nurses to adhere to these ever changing patient cultures in order to offer culturally responsive care.

Reference

Alluaigan, D. (2011). Theory development and historical background.  Retrieved on Sept. 15, 2018 from http://nursingtheories.blogspot.com/2011/07/leiningers-theory-of-culture-care.html  

American Association of Colleges of Nursing: 2017 - 2018 Standard Data Reports. Retrieved on Sept. 15, 2018 from:https://www.aacnnursing.org/News-Information/Research-Data-Center/Standard-Data-Reports

Felsentein, D.R. (2018). Enhancing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Cultural Competence in a Midwestern Primary Care Clinic Setting (Journal for Nurses in Professional Development), 34(3), 142-150.  The Netherlands: Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.

Grandbois, D.M., Warne, D. & Eschiti, V. (2012). The Impact of History and Culture on Nursing Care of Native American Elders. (Journal of Gerontological Nursing.) 38(10):3-5 https://doi.org/10.3928/00989134-20120911-01

Waldrop, J & Stern, S.M (2003). Disability status: 2000, Census 2000 Brief  Retrieved on Set. 15, 2018 from http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-17.pdf