Impact Of Culture In Nursing

This assignment is going to look at the impact of culture in a professional practice and how it will affect patients and their needs in nursing. ‘Culture’ refers to the ways in which people in a given society live together and how they communicate with each other (Hendry,2008). The aspects of culture this assignment will look at is religion, language and gender and how nurses develop cultural competency and cultural sensitivity towards their patients.

Culture is a set of beliefs, values and attitudes that a person inherits from a society or a group that they are in and they learn how to view the world and how to behave, these principles can then be passed down from generation to generation so that the culture that has been inherited can

personal cleansing and hygiene. There are also some patients who will only want a female nurse or male nurse to attend to their personal care; There are some nurses who are in danger of ignoring certain cultures that some patients have therefore not giving the patient the right care that they need. Which is why cultural competency is really important, to offer culturally competent care is really imperative as nurses have to support patient’s decisions made by their family members or from the patient and the decision may come from a cultural perspective which may not sit well for nurses. Nowadays culturally competent care cannot be offered effectively unless nurses have a respectable understanding of different cultural backgrounds. When developing culturally competent skills it can make nurses become more involved when giving care to the patient without making any

Nurses needs to take preferences into consideration, for example; prayer room, female doctor/nurse. Nurses will need to priorities these types of recommendations for certain patients and make sure that they feel comfortable and not held back because of their culture and their beliefs. Some patients will ask openly on what they need, for example if a patient is near the end of their life and they are a Christian then they may ask for a priest to come in and pray for them as this is what the patient believes in. Therefore, nurses need to understand these types of recommendations that patients will make for their care. Nurses need to understand that in some cultures the men are dominant decision makers so they need to be asked first if their child or wife needs to undergo surgery or something serious so the women need to understand the male and female roles in certain cultures. Papadopoulos (2006:11) states that even know some nurses may not respect or agree with certain people’s beliefs or opinions they should at least respect the patient and treat them equally to give effective