What should the nurse do when planning nursing care for a client with a different cultural background the nurse should?

Cultural competence in nursing aids the growth and development of nurses while also incorporating relevant societal values. Nursing as a career is versatile—from caring for the sick, providing treatment plans, taking care of the elderly in a home, and more.

The best nurses are not only technically sound but also experts in cultural competence.

Cultural Competence in Nursing: What It Means

Cultural competence in nursing implies the ability of health care workers to give the best medical care to patients while demonstrating cultural awareness for their beliefs, race, and values. It entails having knowledge of patients’ cultural diversity and treating them with this in mind.

Cultural competence prepares nurses to empathize, relate more to patients, and attend more deeply to their needs. Hospital patients can often be agitated or stressed. Having someone on their care team who speaks their language or understands their unique background may help them to relax, leading to greater therapy and overall care.

Culturally Competent Care in Nursing

Cultural competence helps the nurse to understand, communicate, and interact with people effectively. More specifically, it centers around:

• Understanding the relationship between nurses and patients
• Acquiring knowledge of various cultural practices and views of the world
• Developing communication skills to promote and achieve interaction among cultures
• Ensuring a positive attitude is displayed toward differences and various cultures

Cultural competence expects more than just tolerating another’s cultures and practices. Instead, it aims to celebrate them through bridging gaps and personalizing care.

Practicing culturally competent care in nursing means taking a holistic approach that spans across all parts of the world. As a nurse, you should always work to respect the diverse cultures you come across when handling patients. It goes a long way to impact the capability and quality of your work.

Components of Cultural Competence in Nursing

Culturally competent care consists of five core building blocks.

• Cultural awareness involves examining yourself, dropping prejudices that you have previously formed against foreign cultures, and developing the right attitude toward giving the best health service to all patients and clients.
• Cultural knowledge involves searching for information about the culture and beliefs of your patients to better understand and interact with them.
• Cultural skills involves your ability to collect relevant data and process it to help engage a patient in meaningful cross-cultural interaction.
• Cultural encounter encourages nurses to venture out of the environment they are conversant with and try new cultures and places. They improve their competence by interacting with people from different backgrounds, cultures, and ethnicities.
• Cultural desire requires a strong motivation to learn more about other cultures. It is a strong force that involves the ability to be open to new people, to accept and understand cultures that are different from yours, and be willing to learn.

Examples of Cultural Competence in Nursing

There are many examples of what a nurse who exhibits cultural competence looks like. A few key traits include:

1. Speaking in terms that are easy for the patient to follow and understand.
2. Not judging or disregarding a patient’s belief and religious background, but encouraging them to do what works best for them.
3. Empathizing with the patient at all times.
4. Valuing the individual and applauding strengths and individuality.

Importance of Cultural Competence in Nursing Care

Cultural competence is necessary because it helps the nurse offer the best services to every patient, leading to high satisfaction and care on the side of the patient. Without cultural competence, the health sector will suffer a great loss and ultimately limit the services that it can offer.

A strong background and knowledge of cultural competence prevents professional health caregivers from possessing stereotypes and being myopic in their thoughts. It also helps them offer the best service to all, regardless of their social status or belief.

Health care workers can strengthen their cultural competence by pursuing continuing education, cross-cultural interactions, or specific assessments. These efforts help to keep their minds open and free of judgment or preformed notions about certain cultures or locations.

The world becomes better with more culturally competent service providers in each sector. Culturally competent nurses are essential to providing top-quality services to their patients—translating to better health care in every community.

Nursing Programs

We offer nursing programs both online and at our Dallas Campus that help prepare students to work in today’s modern and integrated health care environment. See our full list of nursing programs below:

• Licensed Vocational Nursing program (Dallas)
• Associate Degree in Nursing program (Dallas)
• LVN-RN Transition program (Dallas)
• RN-BSN program (Online)
• Master of Science in Nursing: Nursing Education (Online)
• Master of Science in Nursing: Nursing Leadership Administration (Online)

Learn more about Nursing at The Chicago School’s College of Nursing and Advanced Health Professions

Do you want to pursue a degree in nursing? Explore the College of Nursing and Advanced Health Professions at The Chicago School. Our programs are designed to prepare professionals for the future of health care. View our full list of programs here.