Cultural Competence In Health Care

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The Use of Cultural Competency in Healthcare Provision
Proper assessment of individuals seeking treatment in the healthcare setting is a crucial component that ultimately dictates whether those individuals receive the attention, guidance, and treatment they need. An important aspect of providing a thorough assessment and associated comprehensive care is cultural awareness. The proper use of cultural awareness, referred to as cultural competency, must be employed to guide the assessments and plans of all healthcare providers. This paper will examine a culturally-based nursing model, and how that model was utilized in the provision of care for a patient in an out-patient gynecological clinic.
Model for Cultural Competency
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The provider uses visual evidence to assess not only the physical attributes of the patient, but also the non-visual cues that allow them to ascertain the individual’s willingness to cooperate fully with the exam. For this paper, several individuals were evaluated for possible inclusion. Inclusion criteria were that the patient had to be from this author’s clinical setting and differ from this author by race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. Furthermore, an additional inclusion criterion was chosen by this author that mandated the individual’s affect indicated that the individual would be a willing …show more content…

The process of questioning a patient about their family medical history allows the healthcare provider another opportunity to evaluate the patient’s social organization. Patient CC’s knowledge of her family’s health history revealed evidence of her close family bonds. It was noted that hypertension and diabetes were overwhelmingly present throughout her family. Both parents and her only sibling were revealed to have hypertension. It was further noted that both grandmothers have type 2 diabetes. Evaluating care from a transcultural perspective, the fact that hypertension is prevalent in CC’s African-American family is not a shocking revelation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2016) point out that nearly one-half of all African-Americans within the United States has high blood pressure. Giger and Davidhizar purport that identifying biological variation such as a genetic predisposition towards hypertension is a key element in transcultural nursing (Purnell, 2015). For a complete genogram, see appendix

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