Standards of Care

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer notes that a current positive trend in health care is to establish systems that are open and receptive to cultural diversity. The writer discusses that culturally competent is the designation that is utilized to describe a hospital or other health care facility that answers the needs of a diverse population through services and training that recognizes cultural diversity and helps to guide those individuals through access points, and services to achieve a better outcome. Cultural competence is defined in a number of ways but includes linguistic recognition and training for the region and or service area of the health care facility, religious and social sensitivity to a variety of diverse issues with particular interest in regionally dominant minorities. This work addresses the Latino population and uses the example of a long-term care facility to demonstrate cultural competence in this area.

From the Paper:

"Mutual understanding on both parts is broken down and can create problems of health risk and even emotional and physical safety. This translates to the skilled and certified staff in a long term care facility. When a CNA is unable to convince a patient that restraints are necessary for their safety, and that all their needs will be met if they are restrained, the person may seriously resist restraints to a point of their own peril. Though restraints are an unfortunate aspect of long term care they serve an important role, especially in the case of extreme frailty or dementia. Within the long term care setting restraint is unfortunately essential but often contrary to cultural and personal beliefs, even for those who are of the culturally dominant race, but to someone with limited English skills they can seem like the most offensive and unacceptable form or torture imaginable. Nurses and CNAs recognize that patient must do things to achieve greater health that are contrary to anything they do normally in their own element and yet if the nurse or CAN is unable to communicate this need and its importance to the patient the patient is left at risk of falling and or physically damaging themselves to seek to achieve unrestricted movement, that they are often physically unable to perform."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (2003) Oral, Linguistic, and Culturally Competent Services: Guides for Managed Care Plans., Rockville, MD. at:http://www.ahrq.gov/about/cods/cultcomp.htm
• Bohon, S. A. (2005). Occupational Attainment of Latino Immigrants in the United States. The Geographical Review, 95(2), 249.
• Cetron, M. J., & Davies, O. (2005, March/April). Trends Now Shaping the Future: Economic, Societal, and Environmental Trends. The Futurist, 39, 27.
• Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development (n.d.) National Center for Cultural Competence at: http://data.georgetown.edu/research/gucchd/nccc/.
• Heuberger, B., Gerber, D., & Anderson, R. (1999). Strength through Cultural Diversity. College Teaching, 47(3), 107.

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