Question

This is Lisa Luther. Lisa has been a resident in Lotus Compassionate Care for two years. Lisa moved to the centre after being diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer. She loves staying in the centre as all the staff and care workers are very supportive in helping her cope with the difficulties brought about by the disease.
Lisa is also suffering from hearing and vision loss;
Her left hear is completely deaf, while her right ear has moderate hearing loss. Lisa wears a hearing aid on her right ear.
Both her eyes have cataracts that render her eyes with moderate visual impairment.
Lisa is a vegan and has been a vegan for the most of her life.

7 June 20xx
11:45:00 AM
While assisting another client eat lunch in the centre’s common dining area, you noticed that the care worker attending to Lisa is serving her meat. Having cared for Lisa in the past, you know that Lisa is vegan and does not eat or use meat products.
You informed the care worker that Lisa follows a vegan diet. The care worker told you that Lisa is not lucid and will not even know what she had lunch.

⦁   How can you ensure that Lisa’s cultural needs are met?
Guidance: in your explanation, provide an example of such cultural needs and what you can do to ensure it is accepted and upheld.

Answer 1

Lisa Luther, Luther surname belong mostly to Germans. And eating meat products and meat is a pretty normal culture there. But if someone is vegan and has been vegan for most of their life, it's their choice and culture and we should respect it, whether the person knows or doesn't know about it. Here feeding Lisa meat is cultural appropriation. Lisa loves staying at the center and trusts her nursing care staff and it is the duty of nursing care staff to take care of her and to not cheat her.

First, I'll try to talk to Lisa's care worker and make her understand whether Lisa can see or not what she is doing is culturally wrong and she should stop doing it and should serve Lisa a vegan food, and I'll make sure to check on my own for a long time that Lisa is getting vegan food. But if in case the care worker still doesn't take this thing seriously then I'll go to the head nurse and will tell them the situation. And if still, nothing happens then I'll make sure to give food to Lisa on my own. I will also try subjecting it to everyone's notice by making other nurses focus on patient's cultural need.

And to make sure, because of physical difficulty any other patient doesn't suffer. I will be writing a letter to the head of the hospital and mention these issues and will ensure patient's cultural need is accepted and upheld. Because if someone is trusting us what least we can do is to not evade their emotions and to respect their culture.

Similarly if a person has some religious belief and the holy day or festival is about to come, we should inform them about it and help him/her to get what they wanted to do in this holy day, like on Easter we can read them holy scripture, if their condition allow we can arrange them their favourite meal rgarding the festival,etc.