Cultural Practice and Nursing Practice
Introduction
Cultural competence is critical in nursing practice considering how it integrates knowledge, attitudes and skills that are crucial in caring for patients from different cultural orientations. Medical professionals have opined that culture influences health practices and how health providers deliver fundamental services to their perceived patients and their illnesses (Dayer-Berenson, 2014).
Importance of Cultural Competence in Nursing Practice
Cultural competence provides nurses with knowledge cognizant to cultural bases and thus creates awareness on ethnicity of patients making it easy to understand genetic compositions and treatment. For example, epidemiology or manifestations of diseases among members of a population may affect medications and care provided to different ethnic groups.
Moreover, cultural competence is important because it ensures that caregivers address attitudes amicably with the intent of improving nursing practice. This is critical as it makes caregivers aware of cultural influences that determine patient behavior and thinking of practitioners so as to plan for best services for patients. This creates awareness on how communication is to be conducted and how nurse-patient interaction is to be conducted so as to better understand client requirements and how to meet such needs.
Conclusion
Cultural competence is critical in nursing practice because it helps address the ever evolving patient attitudes and promotes healthy communication and interaction between caregivers and patients. However, it is important for nursing professionals to effectively develop their cultural competence skills. For instance, effective communication skills will help a patient understand care plan to be provided. It has been established that enhanced cultural competence skills are useful in guiding nurses to adapt to different situations in the most flexible way (Riff etal, 2013). Research studies have established that hospital environments may not be familiar places for patients and thus prompting the need to understand their cultural identities (Dayer-Berenson, 2014).
References
Dayer-Berenson, L. (2014). Cultural competencies for nurses: Impact on health and illness.
Burlington, Mass: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Riff, J., Ryan, S. F., Hansen-Turton, T., & Ridgway, C. G. (2013). Convenient care clinics: The
essential guide for clinicians, managers, and educators. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company.