Cultural diversity and communication

Different cultures have different norms, values and expectations, and these cultural differences have a strong influence on educational practices. The nature and outcomes of caregiving are different for various reasons, depending on such factors as  gender; age; cultural/ethnic traditions, values and beliefs; minority status; In order to provide effective care caregivers need to be aware of and be responsive to these culturally diverse groups. Fear of stigma in response to a disease or physical disability may influence minority group members’ experiences of caregiving. They may also make them less likely to receive social and professional support services, potentially causing them to suffer levels of distress that are much greater than those documented in samples of non-minority backgrounds.

Every patient’s attitude and behavior towards their health and illness differ in many ways, but the most profound difference that must be religiously considered is the role of the underlying cultural factors affecting the patient’s outlook on their health condition. Hence, having cross-cultural nursing knowledge enables the nurse to interact effectively with the individual preferences of each culturally influenced health behaviors to avoid misunderstanding and enable the nurse to provide suitable care in a culturally diverse health care setting.

It should also be taken into serious consideration to recognize the fact that even though culture with its existing structure are subject to change brought about by the effect of social shifts as immigrants learn to adapt to their host culture, yet still, we cannot ignore or dismiss the possibility that culture change occurs in unpredictable stages, that people in a growing culturally diverse population strive to maintain their traditional cultural habits and beliefs even with the prevailing dominant values and traditions of the host society. Failure to recognize this logical truth is the very reason that substantiates for the failure of the health care system resulting in a substandard patient care.

Since there is a wide variation of culturally influenced health behaviors and beliefs as a result of culturally induced traditional interpretation of illness and disease and their causes, the need to develop a diverse nursing approach to consistently meet each distinct behavior and belief is essentially important to serve as determinants from which a careful analysis and conclusion can be derive from, and to relate them to these individual preferences in order to render a careful nursing assessment and diagnosis, which when not appropriately recognized and not carefully applied to nursing practice may cause tension and confusion between the nurse and the patient, wherein the nurse would most likely rely only on pure assumptions and make inaccurate assessments which would result in the delivery of unsuitable nursing care.