I'm in my second semester of nursing school. It's a combined course of Med-Surg/OB.
The first semester we went over the fundamentals. We covered a lot of cultural aspects to nursing, believe me, I understand it's importance.
But, here we are, going over it again in Nursing II. It's so redundant! Basically you could boil it down to "treat people with respect and tolerate their various cultural nuances".
And honestly, I'm not in anthropology school, I'm in nursing school. I don't think it's necessary to be extremely knowledgeable about all the various cultures in the world in order to provide excellent nursing care.
I'm not ethnocentric and I respect the various forms of culture and I'm bilingual, but, come on is it really necessary for me to know that I can't look a Muslim man in the face while speaking to him! We're all human and we basically want to be treated with respect and dignity.
Okay - I feel better now after venting.