Culturally Competent Nursing Care

Paper Summary:

The following paper asserts the importance of culturally competent nursing not only on a practical level, but also in a theoretical and philosophical sense of the nursing profession. It suggests that in orienting nurses to a hospital environment, the cultural differences between patients is a critical aspect to be considered when providing nursing care.

From the Paper:

First of all, what is meant by culturally competent nursing care? Culturally competent nursing care takes into consideration the different cultural needs of the individual patient. It takes into consideration the culture that exists outside of the hospital as well as the culture that has been created within the hospital to respond to those needs. Ann Tomey s collection of essays on nursing theories suggests that the importance of having a paradigmatic approach to nursing, rather than a mere series of responses on a daily basis gives the nurse a framework to rely upon when making difficult decisions. This is true not only of individual nurses when making decisions, but also of hospital policy as a whole. (Tomey 1998, p.5)One such framework provided for a philosophical analysis of the needs of nursing is provided in Jacqueline s Fawcett's book on the subject. Fawcett has developed a model of nursing that links the profession s responsibilities into four distinct areas she divides into person, environment, health, as well as the actual procedures of nursing itself. Fawcett s framework is uniquely helpful to a culturally competent form of nursing practice because it forces practitioners not simply to look at the body of the patient in a generic fashion, but to locate the body in a particular cultural world.

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