Increase Your Cultural Awareness and Improve Your Patient Care

As people around the world become more mobile and advancing technology fosters stronger global connections, mastery of cultural awareness becomes even more important for nurses. All nurses will increasingly have to provide care for patients from different cultural backgrounds. Patients’ cultural histories may inform their beliefs about illness and medical care.

They can even influence the way that patients interact with nurses and other care providers. As job openings for those with an advanced nursing degree continue to grow at a high clip, graduates will need to ensure they are being culturally sensitive when dealing with every patient.

Nurses put their patients at risk when they neglect to develop appropriate sensitivity towards others’ cultural needs. Cultural insensitivity compromises a nurse’s ability to provide top-notch care for his or her patients, and it can undermine patients’ trust in the medical establishment. It can even negatively affect the way nurses collaborate with one another when one nurse fails to display cultural sensitivity to another nurse from a different ethnic or cultural background.

How Culture Changes Patients’ Relationship With Health Care

A nurse who was born to American parents and raised wholly within mainstream American culture might not understand why a patient with a different cultural background may refuse certain kinds of medical treatment, feel uncomfortable talking with a care provider of the opposite sex, or rely on a family member to make medical decisions instead of making them him or herself. But these are all ways that people from different cultures approach medical care, thanks to the cultural beliefs they were raised with.

For example, people from some cultures may feel that certain medical symptoms, like incontinence or tooth decay, are simply side effects of aging and not worth seeking treatment for. Even if these problems are causing them distress or discomfort, a relatively young patient in his or her 50s or 60s may tell a care provider that he or she is simply “too old” to worry about seeking treatment for these problems, regardless of the 20 or 30 years of life that person may still have to look forward to.

In other cultures, it’s considered rude to make direct eye contact when speaking to a person of authority. Some patients may have been raised with the cultural belief that the patriarch of the family makes all medical decisions for everyone, regardless of individual preferences. Still other patients may possess the cultural belief that it’s inappropriate to discuss private medical matters with a stranger, or with a person of the opposite sex.

Cultural Insensitivity Can Hinder Patient Outcomes

Nurses need cultural awareness because it helps them provide the best possible care for their patients, and work toward the best patient outcomes. For example, what happens if a nurse administers insulin to a diabetic patient, but then leaves that patient a tray of foods that the patient can’t eat for cultural or religious reasons?

The patient goes hungry, experiences a precipitous drop in blood sugar thanks to the insulin, and could suffer serious medical complications or even death. Even if the patient points out to the nurse that he or she can’t eat the food, complications could arise in the time it takes the nurse to get new food. The nurse needs to be aware of patients’ cultural beliefs before offering care.

Cultural insensitivity can get in the way of collaboration between nurses, too. A new nursing school graduate with a thick Chinese accent may feel upset when her supervisor assigns her a Korean patient who doesn’t speak English, on the grounds that “You can speak Chinese with her.” A nurse who is a single mother and escaped from poverty may not appreciate another nurse making snarky remarks about a single, pregnant patient on Medicaid. These moments of insensitivity can have a profound impact on a nursing team’s ability to provide care.

Work on Building Cultural Competence as a Nurse

Building cultural competence as a nurse must often be a work in progress — after all, it’s not easy to learn about other cultures, and you have no way of knowing what kind of background your next patient might come from. Here are some tips to help you build cultural sensitivity:

• Don’t make assumptions about a person’s cultural beliefs based on their appearance or language. A person who appears to belong to a specific ethnic group may in fact belong to an entirely different group, and just because a person was born into a culture doesn’t mean that he or she continues to practice its beliefs as an adult.

• Ask about the patient’s health problems and inquire about his or her beliefs regarding treatment. Some patients may prefer to try traditional treatments before seeking care, and may even bring those treatments into the hospital with them.

• When in doubt, don’t be afraid to ask polite, professional questions about a patient’s cultural background and needs.

• Use an interpreter if the patient doesn’t speak your language.

• Respect the patient’s support system, whether it’s family, friends, or religious figures.

• Make an effort to understand the roles of men and women in a patient’s culture and family.

Cultural sensitivity is growing in importance for nurses and other care providers as the world rapidly becomes smaller and smaller. Do what you can to increase your own cultural competence, and your patients will thank you for it.