The Role of Cultural Competence: Delivering Patient-Centered Care amidst Cultural Conflict

The Role of Cultural Competence:
Delivering Patient-Centered Care amidst Cultural Conflict
E Uz
Emory School of Nursing Atlanta, Georgia
The Role of Cultural Competence:
Delivering Patient-centered Care amidst Cultural Conflict
Summary
Cultural competence and patient centered care are aimed at viewing each patient from a unique perspective. Cultural competence is a combination of skills that nurses should possess so as to provide a patient-centered care. (Camphinah-Bacote, 2011). Cultural competence and patient centered care are aimed at improving the quality of healthcare. Nevertheless, each of them focuses on varying facets of quality since patient-centeredness advocates for personalized care while cultural competence emphasizes on health equalities.
To provide a positive patient experience, the healthcare professional must be culturally competent. Cultural skills enable a nurse to gather the relevant information from the patient. Similarly, cultural skills are useful in conducting cultural assessments so as to examine the cultural practices, values, and beliefs of the patient with an overall intention of delivering patient centered and culturally competent care.
Explanatory models (EMs) are tools used to obtain an account of the ailment from the patient. To ease the process of conducting cultural assessments, various authors developed the LEARN and ETHNIC cultural analysis tools. Cultural encounters involve intermingling with patients from diverse cultural settings so as to refine, validate, and modify the existing values, practices and beliefs.
Culture has always generated conflicts, but ironically nurses can use the conflict as a platform of developing compassion. Through compassion the nurse easily connects with the patient. In culturally conflicting situations, the nurse should first comprehend the situation from the viewpoint of the patient and then show compassion. The compassion shows that nurse respects their dissimilarities and is willing to get to a consensus with the patient. Thus a culturally competent and patie...