Key challenges in cultural & family care (for class)

[ghaleon128]

Hello everyone I'm curious to your thoughts on, you guessed it, key challenges in cultural and family care. Any experience you could share would be very helpful. It seems like nursing is being focused increasingly more to people from various cultures and that's something that I think is sort of interesting and important to understand.

[Flightline, BSN, RN]

If you work in AZ, you better learn to speak Spanish. You do that, and you will have crossed so many important bridges between family and culture that you will be their hero. What dissapoints me is that while I was working in AZ, I was highly motivated and wanted to learn Spanish. My ego really cried out to be bilingual.

Now, all I have is retired military patients and no reason at all to know Spanish and no way to practice it live.

In the Southwest a nurse learning Spanish is more important than a nurse having a BSN or CCRN. I guarantee it.

Hasta La Vista

[miko014]

First of all, thanks for telling us it's for class. I hate when people don't tell us that!

What cultures specifically are you asking about? It really depends on your location as to who you're going to be dealing with. Besides the hispanic population, the Somali population is growing rapidly in certain areas. Also, there are areas of the country with high Asian populations. Plus everything in between. I think the key to giving culturally competent care is asking the pt what they want/need. You can't really say, "oh, I see you're from Mexico, so I'll just do everything my book says you want me to do" because everyone really is different. For example, I learned in school that Asian people tend to be stoic about pain. I'm stoc about pain, but I'm not Asian, and I have met people who are Asian who can't stand pain at all and scream at the top of their lungs. And think about Americans - we all expect something different! I think it can be incredibly stressful if you're just trying to guess what people want/need. Ask them, and they will tell you.

[Roseyposey]

IMHO, the key culture to understand is the one of generational poverty - regardless of any sort of racial heritage.