Cultural Competence In Health Care

Cultural competence in Health Care
According to …..REF…. is an approach to learning, communicating, providing care and working respectfully with others, who may look or think differently or have a unique set of experiences that shape their beliefs and values. Culture and language can influence the perception of health and wellness; different belief system often shape the behaviours of patients and their attitudes toward health care providers. Nurses need to have deeper understanding of cultural diversity to provide patient centered care. Community, language, religion, and cultural perceptions of health and wellness are all matters of importance that need to be understood by the nurses when working with culturally diverse patients (Daniels,

A nurse is only truly competent if he or she can knowingly handle patients whose entire value system is different from his or her own but still manages to establish and maintain a therapeutic relationship that paves way for effective implementation of nursing actions. The delivery of care by the nurse who looks at the world through his or her own limited set of values can compromise the quality of care delivery for patients from other cultures. Being culturally sensitive allow nurses to recognize own biases and assumptions against a specific cultural. Challenges for Nurse Leaders
In order to be competent as a health care professional, one must be able to deliver care accordingly for a patient’s culture. The absence of cultural competence often yields an uncomfortable situation for both the healthcare team and the patient in need (REF). Indeed, the potential for medical errors is greater when a lack of cultural competence exists. If the health care providers are unable to understand the patient, the delivery of care can be inconsistent,

To provide cultural competent care, nurses should utilize the cultural competent framework that provides a guide for health care providers and reach to enlightenment of one's own culture, other's culture and how it influences the perception and solution of an issue. Campinha-Bacote’s theoretical model (1999,2002) in cultural competence consists of five components: (1) cultural awareness, (2) cultural knowledge, (3) cultural skill, (4) cultural encounters, and (5) cultural desire. All these components are interwoven and have an interdependent relationship; addressing these will allow nurse leaders to cultivate greater cultural