Cultural Competence Essay

Culture is a strong part of people's lives. It influences their views, their values, their humour, their hopes, their loyalties, and their worries and fears, and thus when working with patients and building relationships, it helps to have some perspective and an understanding of their culture. Ireland now has a very diverse population made up of many cultural, religious and ethnic groups. A particularly comprehensive definition of the term explicitly focused on health care is the one given by Lavizzo-Moury and MacKenzie (1996): " Cultural competence is the demonstrated awareness and integration of three population-specific issues: health-related beliefs and cultural values, disease incidence and prevalence, and treatment efficacy. But perhaps the

109)). Individuals from these cultures and subcultures bring with them differing ideas and expectations with regard to work, family, education, governance, the marketplace, and health care, just to name a few. It is crucial for a caregiver to respect these differences in a positive and constructive way in order to achieve mutual understanding in the delivery of effective care.

Josepha Campinha-Bacote developed the Process of Cultural Competence in the Delivery of Health Care Services Model, which emphasizes the important role that a key effective characteristic — cultural desire — plays in the process of cultural competence. ". She defines cultural desire as " the motivation of the nurse to ‘ want to ' engage in the process of becoming culturally competent; not to ‘ have to. '" She further states that cultural desire " includes a genuine passion and commitment to be open and flexible with others; a respect and understanding of differences, yet a commitment to build upon similarities; a willingness to learn from patients and others as cultural informants; and a sense of humility. Her model depicts cultural desire as the base of a