Cultural Competence And Care: a Reflection Paper

My families’ health care beliefs and practices vary. My mother’s parents were proactive in getting routine checkups, preventive health workups, routine lab work. My fathers' side, however, was different until Something catastrophic would happen and then they would be proactive I the health care. My mothers’ side uses more holistic medicine rather than modern-day medicine when it comes to minor illness, such as a cold. They would use herbs and oils to treat minor ailments. My fathers' side feeds everything. Feed a fever and feed a cold. Both sides pray for the sick and help those in need. The family is first because family is everything. We are taught to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. We are to care for the elderly also. Even in death. We celebrate our loved one’s lives and the life they lived. We usually have an open casket viewing unless a closed casket is warranted.

Our family’s beliefs, values, and health practices are very similar to the American Indians and the Chinese. Both cultures put religion and family first no matter what. They both also use holistic medicines and treatments before seeking an outside source. They both celebrate loved one that has passed on to death. The African Americans also celebrate the lives of loved ones that have passed. They also take care of their families and good faith in God, putting them first. Having a tight-knit family is important to all three of these cultures. All three are raised to take care of the older and younger family members. To look out for one another. All three are similar with what is important to their heritage.

My parents as they get older have come to realize that preventative checkups and routine maintenance are well worth the effort. Once my father’s parents had heart attacks and 2 of his brothers, my mother made him start going to the Dr. office regularly whether he wanted to or not. When I was little, I only remember going to the doctor’s office if I was sick. I know as an adult, go to the doctor’s office every 6 months for check-ups and routine lab work. I would rather know or catch something early than to find out too late that something is wrong. I make sure my family takes their vitamins and Zinc, which helps to prevent catching infection and viruses. We use lemon, honey, and garlic in our food which also helps the immune system. Keep their hands washed frequently also. I also make sure that if they have a regimen to follow that they follow it until it is complete to prevent a reoccurrence. I also make sure they are educated on their health.

Our practices I believe are not that different from other cultures. I think that most try to prevent illness in their own ways whether it be vitamins, hand washing taking proactive steps of their own to take care of their own needs and the needs of their family members and putting the religion before all. “Having a regular doctor or a usual source of care facilitates the process of obtaining health care when it is needed because people who do not have a regular doctor or healthcare provider are less likely to obtain preventive services, or diagnosis, treatment, and management of chronic conditions. “Health insurance coverage is also an important determinant of access to health care. “Higher proportions of minorities compared to Whites do not have a usual source of care and do not have health insurance”.

Cultural competence is the gradually developed capacity of nurses to provide safe and quality health care to clients of different cultural backgrounds, its defining attributes are cultural awareness, cultural sensitivity, cultural knowledge, cultural skill, and dynamic process. Antecedents are cultural diversity, cultural encounter, and cultural desire. Consequences involve three beneficiaries, as follows: clients, nurses, and healthcare organizations. “Empirical referents have primarily consisted in self-reported tools the understanding of cultural competence of nurses that emerged in this concept analysis will contribute to the development of a rigorous design of instruments or research”.

Cultural competence in an on-going process. You must have continuing education to help, to take extra training courses will aid us in the ability to provide better cultural care. Although it is not possible to know every culture, attending additional training session will help us better understand, be able to better empathize, show better respect to patients and families when caring for people of other cultures. In the goal of providing the best care possible to our patients. Familiarizing ourselves with the cultures we see most in our practices. The working from there. Getting more familiar and building better repours with our clients. Using those networking skills and attention to provide better care to those who come to us with their needs. Once others in the community see us meeting the needs of their neighbors and family members, they will then trust us enough to let us provide resources for them as well.

Why Is Cultural Competence Important?

It is important to build relationships with our clients. The more knowledge we have about the culture, the more we will be able to help the clients with other resources to meet those needs. When you build trust with your patients, they will take your advice when it comes to their care. We also need to look at the patient’s specific circumstance to provide the best care for the patient, and safety is a big priority for most, and some will not be comfortable with you coming to their home if that is where you will provide care to them. That is why building a good relationship with these people is so very important. It will also promote healing. “Culturally responsive services offer clients a chance to explore the impact of culture (including historical and generational events), acculturation, discrimination, and bias, and such services also allow them to examine how these impacts relate to or affect their mental and physical health”. Culturally responsive practice recognizes the fundamental importance of language and the right to language accessibility, including translation and interpreter services. For clients, culturally responsive services honor the beliefs that culture is embedded in the clients' language and their implicit and explicit communication styles and that language-accommodating services can have a positive effect on clients' responses to treatment and subsequent engagement in recovery services. “An understanding of race, ethnicity, religion, and culture is necessary to appreciate the diversity of human dynamics and to treat all clients effectively”. Before we begin to probe the cultures, races, and ethnicities of their clients and use this information to improve client treatment, we must first examine and understand their own cultural histories, racial and ethnic heritages, and cultural values and beliefs. This applies to all practitioners regardless of race, ethnicity, or cultural identity and beyond that, we should clearly identify the influences of their own cultural experiences on the counseling relationship. In other words, we must understand, embrace, and, if warranted, reexamine and adjust his or her own worldview to practice in a culturally competent manner. This is why we must be well educated and recognize the importance of cultural competence in order to provide the best care.

Cultural competency describes a process whereby healthcare provider considers and understand how structural, financial, social, and cultural factors affect individuals' health and attitudes toward illness and disability, and the ways they access services. Culturally competent providers, in theory, deliver better care when each new patient encounter improves their understanding of the patient and healthcare providers are encouraged to abandon counterproductive stereotyping and to alter the power differential between the patient and provider to achieve culturally competent healthcare. “There are also wide socioeconomic status gaps between healthcare providers and their patients. Healthcare providers, especially physicians, enjoy the social and economic benefits that accompany high levels of education and occupational prestige”. Without being fully conscious of the gap between their patients’ lives and their own, physicians and other healthcare providers may distance themselves from their patients or stereotype those from lower as the “other” and if the patient’s cultural background also differs, additional distancing may occur, particularly if providers have stereotypical views of other cultures.

African Americans are less likely to possess private or employment-based health insurance relative to white Americans and are more likely to be covered via Medicaid or other publicly funded insurance and also, African Americans are almost twice as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be uninsured. High rates of underinsurance among this population occur even though over 8 in 10 African Americans are in working families, as a disproportionate percentage of African Americans work in jobs that provide no health insurance.

The federal Indian Health Service (IHS) provides healthcare services primarily on Indian reservations, which are home to only a minority of American Indians (as few as 30%), as most of the population currently lives in urban or other non-reservation areas. To obtain IHS care, Indians must travel to their home reservation, yet a large majority (80%) of American Indians and Alaska Natives report no access to IHS facilities. You can see by these number there is still a large amount of need goes untreated due to the lack of Health insurance. "Half of the American Indians and Alaska Natives have job-based health insurance, while one quarter receives Medicaid insurance and a similar proportion are uninsured or report only IHS coverage”. American Indian or Alaska Native households are linguistically isolated.

According to these numbers, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have disproportionately high rates of uninsured and communities face linguistic isolation. Hispanic Americans face greater barriers to health insurance than all other U. S. racial and ethnic groups. The probability of being uninsured among Hispanic Americans is 35 percent, compared with 17. 5 percent for the general population and this disparity largely results from the lack of job-based insurance provided to Hispanic Americans, who disproportionately work in blue-collar and service-oriented jobs.

I, as a healthcare person, will continue to increase my education of being culturally competent. I will seek out the necessary tools to help meet the needs of my patients. Understanding the patient needs in all aspects of their lives is very important. We must be attentive to the needs of our patients and educate them the best we can along with providing the best care possible. Understanding their feelings, understanding their language are all small parts of a big picture. A puzzle that has a lot of little pieces that need to be gently put together to see the big picture. Especially when there are a lot of cultures out there that depend on holistic medicines and practices. We must understand this in the modern world of health care. We will also need to educate patients on everything that will be done. There are a lot of cultures out the like the Amish for example, will not accept a blood transfusion because it is against their religion. Some cultures come to the United States seeking cures for ailments never seen in other countries. They come to the United States because of our Modern Medicine. For surgeries only performed in the United States. These are perfect examples of why we all need to be culturally aware of others. There are so many aspects of these patients lives. That is why it is so imperative that we continue to educate ourselves to these different cultures.