Cultural Competency

What is the importance of cultural competency in nursing practice? Support your response. We as part of the health care team need to understand all cultures in order to provide holistic Nursing care. Being culture competent is more than just knowing what each culture traditional norms are, it is knowing one’s own beliefs and values and being able to put these aside when providing care. Since each culture and religion perceives diseases, treatments and value of life differently we as nurses need to make sure our care is delivered around these. By tailoring when possible our interventions to respect their culture we also help to gain their trust. Example of this can be ensuring we give the patient who is Muslim his medications first so he can pray on time we show him respect for his religion and him.
In giving care to patients it is often hard to set aside our own biases to honor a patient’s wish. We need to remember even though we have medical science as our background it doesn’t mean our decisions are correct. Current population of the United States is changing and the percentage of Caucasians is dropping where other cultures and races like Hispanic are beginning to rise. The change in dynamics of the population of the United States will have effects on how traditional western medicine is given. We can become cultural competent by identifying where we hold cultural biases, and examining them. To exam them we need to educate ourselves on that culture so we have an understanding of reason behind their traditions. Once we have knowledge of our viewpoints , the clients situation their believes , attitudes and skills than we have the tools to make an appropriate plan of