Significantly, we interact with different people from diverse backgrounds in our nursing profession. This diversity can be in terms of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, and religion. As nurses, we ought to accept these differences and interact with other people effectively while doing our work. That is why culturally sensitive care is critical in health care delivery. Tucker and colleagues (2011) defined culturally sensitive care as the care that centers on responding to feelings, attitudes, and situations of groups of people that have common national, religious, cultural, racial, and ethnic heritages. This concept helps nurses and other professionals in the health sector deliver services free of culturally-based discrimination.
Culturally sensitive care helps health care providers to attain patient satisfaction. Dell’Osso (2017) argued that cultural sensitivity enables health care workers to develop positive relationships with patients. Cultural sensitivity allows ideal values of dignity, respect, and compassion to prevail in health care delivery. Notably, these values make patients feel valued. Thus, they become more corporative with medical procedures, allowing the health care workers to do a quality job. For instance, consider a scenario where the doctor and the patient are from different cultural backgrounds. The doctor observes cultural sensitivity while handling the patient. The latter will feel dignified by the services and feel safe to share details that help the former (the doctor) provide quality care with the doctor. It is worth noting that culturally sensitive care prevents conflicts between patients and healthcare providers (Dell’Osso, 2017). It creates a positive environment where patients and healthcare providers can interact healthily for quality health care delivery.
The best way to be culturally sensitive is to be aware. Awareness means that one is informed about diverse cultures to avoid interacting with people based on assumptions. It also means that healthcare professionals understand the “dos” and the “don’ts” of their patients’ culture to avoid patient-related conflicts.
References
Dell’Osso, L. D. (2017). Culturally Sensitivity in Healthcare: The New Modern-Day Medicine. Dominican University of California. https://scholar.dominican.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1072&context=senior-theses
Tucker, M. C. et al. (2011). Patient-Centered Culturally Sensitive Health Care: Model Testing and Refinement. Health Psychology, 30(3), 342-350. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092156/
