Multi Cultural Health Care

[misslo]

One of the questions in our homework has me stumped. Before I enter the question I just want to say that I AM NOT asking for the answer, I just need help understanding it.

Here goes:

You are working with Hispanic parents of newborns and discussing the immunization of the baby. To be culturally sensitive, address this issue in relation to communication, time, space, social organization and environment control.

For some reason, this one is going over my head! I have called a few classmates and they too aren't sure how to answer this one. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

MissLo

[nurseshepherd]

Being an OB nurse, I have to be very aware of my patient's culture and tailor my nursing to better care for them. It is a fundamental tenet of nursing to provide culturally sensitive care. Many of our Hispanic women will not answer questions if their husbands are in the room, they defer to them because in their culture the husband often makes decisions for the wife. Our Muslim patients have special needs when it comes to attire in the delivery room, disposition of the placenta, etc. and we do what we can to accomodate. I could go on, but there are plenty of reasons it is taught in nursing school. Just like we tailor our education of patients to their cognitive level and age, we tailor our care to the needs (as much as we can) of our patients.

[CHATSDALE]

one problem here is that the student that has been taught to expect the hispanic, black, muslim patient to act in a certain way they often react like that w/o regard that the woman may be completely different

than the sterotype that was presented in class

we should see patients as individuals with intelligence not so different than our own

have many hispanic family members have never seen any woman defer to men or who are incapable of making decisions for themselves

[TRINI82]

Chatsdale, that is not true. You are being taught on how to deal with something you're faced with, not to walk into a room and automatically treat a patient based on just what her culture entails. Not everyone from a specific culture practices or believes the same thing, so that would be inappropriate. We do fire drills, in case there is a fire, we would be prepared on how to deal with it, but we don't expect to be a fire in every building we go into. It's the same thing, we are preparing ourselves for that specific situation. That is also reason why we have patient assessments. We are there to do what is best for the patient. So if a patient has speficic culture restrictions, are you saying that we should just ignore them?

[nurseshepherd]

one problem here is that the student that has been taught to expect the hispanic, black, muslim patient to act in a certain way they often react like that w/o regard that the woman may be completely different

than the sterotype that was presented in class

we should see patients as individuals with intelligence not so different than our own

have many hispanic family members have never seen any woman defer to men or who are incapable of making decisions for themselves

There are no absolutes with this and cultural sensitivity certainly recognizes that not everyone within an ethnic group is the same. Teaching students and nurses to be more aware of their patient's needs from a cultural standpoint is enhancing their ability to care for patients from all cultures.

No, not all Hispanic women defer decisions to their husbands, but a lot of them do and as a health care professional I know that and give him opportunities to make decisions in keeping with what the wife wants. She should not have to deal with his displeasure over being usurped or feeling dishonored. We provide the same nursing care to everyone, just tailor it a bit to accomodate special needs whether it is cultural, disability, age, gender, etc.