Culture: Chronic Illness, Essay Example

In the health setting, culture can act as a barrier to not only communication, but also methods in treatment. The United States has long been considered a melting pot of numerous cultures in which incorporate various worldviews and beliefs. Different cultures inhabit different beliefs, and traditions in which can influence how a nurse is able to interact, diagnose, or treat the patient. Comprehending different background and cultures is a fundamental part of the nursing profession. Being able to have an understanding of someone else’s culture is good when knowing how to interact or work with the patients. The best method in which incoming nurses, and even health specialists that have been employed for a long amount of time is to continually retrain on different cultures. In doing so, nurses as well as other professional organizations form work teams in which help in training and discussing important factors such as cultural competence in the health settings.

It has become a necessary requirement in the healthcare industry to teach cultural competence as diversity continues to grow. This is imperative for communicating effectively, and delivering patient centered care. In order to provide cultural competent care, nurses and other health professionals must adapt to the cultural and diversity contexts of the communities and patients they serve, obtain and institutionalize cultural knowledge, manage the dynamics of difference, assess themselves, and overall value diversity. The increase in diversity within the United States brings challenges and opportunities for policy makers, healthcare systems, and healthcare providers. A trite definition of cultural competence is the capability of organizations and providers to adequately provide health care services in which meets the linguistic, cultural, and social needs of patients. A healthcare system that is culturally competent can help to improve quality of care and health outcomes, and can contribute to the elimination of disparities in ethnic and racial health. In looking at the aspects of chronic illness, ethnic and racial minorities have an increase mortality and morbidity from chronic diseases as compared to other groups. This can have dire implications that for those that do deal with chronic disease long-term face higher financial burdens, and limited activity. Communication, language, and low literacy impacts access to health care for minorities. To have cultural competency in the organization is to understand and integrate the factors of individual behaviors, beliefs, and values by various individuals in the structure and delivery of the health care system. For chronic illness patients this means the use of community health workers, training for cultural awareness, coordinate with traditional healers, include community and family members in healthcare decisions, and numerous other options.

The disciplines that are represented in the workplace includes emergency care, pediatrics, labor and delivery, neonatal intensive care unit, nurse anesthetists, and nurse practitioners. These work teams could also include others that work directly with patients such as those in pharmacy, and pastoral care that work with numerous cultures. The resources that will be used in helping to explore and inform for the work team includes, but not limited to literature for nursing professionals on caring for different cultures, health literacy on and chronic disease screening and management. However, more importantly is by learning either by experience or in looking at different case studies of dealing with chronic illness patients from other cultures. In looking at the 13 case studies from the Alliance of Community Health Plans Foundation to address the CLAS Standards, is understanding the different levels of familiarity as well as comfort in understanding how cultural competency impacts the way they manage patients. In looking at the case studies, they highlight the different disparities in handling different cultures, as well as the barriers that needed to be crossed to create and implement better approaches in addressing the cultural and linguistic needs of the patients.

These case studies provide the business benefits that address the costs and the National CLAS Standards. In exploring the 14 CLAS Standards in both the case studies, and within the organization it is imperative to point out the importance of the first standard. This standard implies that patients are treated with the upmost understanding and respect in which is accommodating to their cultural beliefs, language, and practices towards health. In ways that not only help to improve the organization, but also is a standard as well is that healthcare organizations should implement strategies that help to obtain, retain, and encourage a diverse leadership and staff at all levels that is representative of the demographics of the community. Staff in every position should continually be trained in being culturally aware of delivering satisfactory patient care. By offering interpreter services and bilingual staff to patients with limited English, it helps in offering a better standard of care. This includes offering information, and materials in the preferred language for patient understanding.

In ways that help to improve the cultural competency in the organization, as well as correlated with the CLAS Standards is to implement within the work teams and throughout the organization a strategic plan in which addresses plans, policies, and goals for providing linguistic and cultural appropriate services. By working closely with the community it helps in creating informal and formal mechanisms to help with a culturally diverse demographic. It is important to remember that cultural competence is an ongoing process of learning that must be taught in a competent manner. Each approach in teaching cultural competence is unique, but must incorporate cross-cultural skilled based approaches in which teaches a diverse range of cultural values and beliefs to provide the best quality of care to patients.