Question

consider that you are a nurse working with a patient who is from a differnt cultrual and ethnic background from your own. Explain how you could translate the concept of cultural competency into practice. Do not forget the ethical considerations.

Answer 1

In today's well connected world, with organizations spread across geographies and having cross cultural teams, cultural competency becomes an ethical question. In absence of cultural competancy, people are not able to understand root cause of particular behavious, work style, attitudes of their peers from different cultures. This leads to wrong judgement of the peers and hence creating the communication, interaction gaps among the people.Thsi can also lead to potential conflicts among the people/employees of company. Hence it is ethical to be sensitive to different cultures, acknowledge the differences, and adapt to those differences.

The differences in national culture lie in values rather than practice. While, in organizational level, culture differences appear mostly in practice rather than value. Intercultural Relations can also called as cross culture communication, says about relation between two or more than two cultures belongs either to a same or different place/city/country or any geographical area.

People who are involved in the convestion with others must have basic idea whats going on in the other country. It's just fine if they don't have any informaiton before hand, but it would be good to have some knowledge to understand what the other person is saying. If they don't understand what the person is saying they can ask the others to explain but in a polite voice.

On the other hand, there are many religions in the world and Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism are some popular religions. Having some basic knowledge (like important festivals, food habits, cultural habits, languages) would be good enough to avoid most of the conflicts.

Cultural competence is an approach in which individual tries to recognize and respect the values, behaviours, attitudes associated with different cultures, which equip him to work effectively in cross-cultural setting. The importance of cultural competence in nursing; it comforts the clients with different beliefs and cultures gives the healthcare staff an opportunity to provide care at the highest level. As respecting the different cultures of patients is an important and necessary skill(George town University, 2018). Cultural competence leads to better communication between the client and the healthcare staff and thus the building of trust.