Strategies to encourage culturally competent Care of Native Americans
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10th November 2020
What strategies would you recommend encouraging culturally competent care of Native Americans?
Even though cultural competence is not a mandatory requirement for healthcare workers, Bastami et al. (2016) suggest that nurses should strive to understand the culture of the community in which they serve. Cultural competence helps nurses provide culturally sensitive care, taking into account various patient cultural elements, such as communication, spirituality, nutrition, and health perception. Essentially, nurses should embrace the fact that patients’ cultures differ from one community to another, making it appropriate to acquaint themselves with unique community-specific cultural aspects every time they transition to new working areas. Those working among the Native Americans should understand the community’s basic cultures that significantly impact the assessment, diagnosis, and management of disease conditions.
To encourage culturally competent care of Native Americans, nurses, and other medical personnel should understand the most common language used by the community members, including facial expressions and body movements (Cai, 2016). They should be able to fluently converse in English, a language commonly spoken by the Native Americans. Additionally, they should know that Native Americans love to listen before they speak, their silence is often a sign of being upset angry, and they rarely speak longer to strangers and unknown people. Apart from communication, nurses should also understand the Native Americans’ spirituality and how it affects their health-seeking behaviors. Most Native Americans are primarily Christians who strongly believe in God. To them, God is the custodian of human health, and living in harmony with Him leads to better health.
The two other Native Americans’ cultural aspects that nurses should consider to encourage culturally competent care include nutrition and health perception. Nutrition has a significant impact on an individual’s health. It can help to control certain conditions but also to increase the risk for others. Comprehensive assessment of Native Americans can only be achieved by nurses who extensively understand the kind of foodstuffs eaten by the community members (Bastami et al., 2016). On health perception, a culturally competent nurse should be aware of the Native Americans’ health-seeking behaviors, which could help assess the severity of the patient’s condition and its possible reasons. It is important to note that a general strategy for encouraging culturally competent care of Native Americans would be to pursue certification in their culture.
References
Bastami, Mohammad Reza, Toktam Kianian, Milad Borji, Mehdi Amirkhani, and Saman Saber. “Assessment of cultural competence among nurses.” Medical Ethics Journal 10, no. 36 (2016): 65-72.
Cai, D. Y. (2016). A concept analysis of cultural competence. International Journal of Nursing Sciences, 3(3), 268-273.