Transcultural Nursing Assessment

Transcultural Nursing Assessment
Transcultural Nursing Assessment
transcultural nursing assessment. The purpose of Milestone 2 is to develop an assessment guide utilizing open-ended questions that will encourage participation by the individual.
Research your individual’s cultural background prior to developing questions. Think about the impact the culture of origin has on the individual’s physical health; that is, what illnesses and conditions are prevalent in this culture? What are commonly held beliefs about health in the individual’s culture of origin that could influence the individual’s perception of healthcare and health practices in the current culture/community?
Refer to Appendix A in your text and select five (5) categories upon which you will concentrate for your assessment guide and questions. Thoroughly review each of the categories, and think about your individual.
Develop an assessment guide and questions with specific initial and follow-up questions. Include questions that reflect a thorough understanding of the categories (Appendix A) that you selected about the influence culture may have on the individual’s health and well-being.
Review the Differences Between Closed and Open-Ended Questions document
Use the suggestions as you formulate/propose your initial and follow-up questions.
Download the Milestone 2 assessment template embedded in these guidelines.
Fill in information using the template. This does not require APA formatting; however, you are expected to write clearly and use proper grammar and spelling. The template is expandable to accommodate your typing.
Transcultural nursing is a branch of nursing that focuses on the cultural values, beliefs, and behaviors of individuals or groups of people from similar or distinct cultures.
It is a nursing speciality that evolved by integrating anthropology’s “culture” concept with nursing’s “care” construct.
Madeleine Leininger, founder of the Transcultural Nursing Society, advanced this concept in 1975.
While it is not a specialty for which nurses pursue extra education in order to obtain certification (as it is for specialties such as nursing informatics, acute care nursing, pediatric nursing, and others), it is a highly valued area of skill in today’s healthcare settings.
As the population becomes more varied, healthcare providers are increasingly encountering patients from different cultural backgrounds.
Being aware of cultural trends while respecting the choices of each individual patient is one of the most important aspects of transcultural nursing.
Implementing the tenets of transcultural nursing effectively can lead to the removal of communication barriers that would otherwise prevent patients from receiving high-quality care.
This, however, entails far more than simply hiring experienced interpreters.
Understanding spoken languages isn’t enough; you also need to pay attention to body language and other signs like voice, tone, and volume to communicate effectively.
Depending on the culture, the importance of these various indicators can vary greatly.
Beyond communication, there are a slew of other areas where nurses will need to demonstrate cultural competency in order to provide the best possible care to all patients.
These include having a basic understanding of the prevalence of certain diseases across cultures; religious holidays and prohibited foods and beverages; psychological and biological differences between cultures; and a culture’s relationship to the environment, which can influence receptivity to healthcare interventions.
What does this portend for nursing’s future?
So, what does this need for transcultural competency entail for nurses who work in the field?
It has been suggested that the nursing workforce should renew its focus on diversity awareness, based on the belief that quality healthcare can only occur within the cultural context of the patient, and that embracing diversity among healthcare professionals will promote multicultural workplace harmony and minimize workplace conflict.
The National Student Nurses Association (NSNA) defines diversity awareness as “a conscious and continuing process in which we identify similarities and distinctions within and between diverse cultural groups.”
This implies a culture-sharing environment among patients and healthcare providers, which improves health results for all parties involved.
On the other hand, a lack of diversity awareness can lead to culturally incongruent nursing care, which can have a negative influence on patient outcomes and, in certain situations, even risk patient safety.
Nurses, for example, must be culturally competent in order to understand when “folk medicine” use may affect patient treatment—or to ask the questions that may help them discover it.
When certain pharmaceuticals are used with herbal therapies, this can assist avoid potentially severe patient outcomes such as drug poisoning.
While this conclusion may appear unlikely at first glance, there have been several malpractice cases involving cultural ineptitude.
With all of this in mind, cultural competence training for nurses and other healthcare personnel is expected to become more prevalent.
It can be beneficial for new nursing graduates to take the initiative to learn more about cultural competence in healthcare, whether by enrolling in a relevant class or volunteering in culturally diverse healthcare settings.
In terms of more apparent changes to the nursing profession, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, nursing leaders acknowledge the significant link between a culturally diverse nursing workforce and high-quality, culturally competent care (AACN).
As a result, efforts will be made to recruit a nurse workforce that is more representative of the diverse patient population.
Nursing programs are likely to concentrate their efforts on attracting and maintaining students from underrepresented groups.
Visit the AACN’s fact sheet on enhancing diversity in the workforce for more information on the efforts being made and the statistics that back them up.