Reflective paragraph on cultural

Ni Tha Zi

University of Wisconsin- Parkside

NURS 101
 Reflective paragraph on cultural

The essay is supposed to address the very first day that one understood cultural

differences. It should explain and bring out the feeling one felt when they realized that cultural

differences existed. Therefore, there should be a narration of that critical day. The essay should

then address how one realized that they have cultural differences and the reaction afterward. The

paper will generally discuss culture, differences, and how one has come to adapt while

interacting with people from different cultures. The audience of this essay is patients and

healthcare officers. It explains the journey through accepting cultural differences and how to

handle patients in the hospital from different cultures. It majors on the importance of

understanding and respecting people's beliefs. In this case, the audience is to ease service

delivery in hospitals, especially when it comes to dealing with different people seeking health

services. Inadequate communication between the healthcare provider and patient contributes to

poor patient outcomes, noncompliance, and litigation. It plays an integral role in minority and

multicultural populations because of cognition, behavior, linguistics, and context barriers.

Cultural competence depends on resolving individual and systemic cultural differences that can

result in misunderstandings and conflict. In situations where the provider cannot obtain

information or negotiate care with the patient, adverse outcomes may occur. Skills to provide

culturally sensitive and appropriate care is crucial in an increasingly diverse population of

patients.

Following a careful examination of both cultural humility and cultural competency

records, it is evident that they are the same and maybe readily mistaken. Regardless, cultural

humility necessitates an individual's openness to ongoing change and a detailed grasp of other

civilizations and features rather than a broad comprehension. Cultural competence is defined as
having a basic understanding of various cultures and then employing that information to give

patients the attention they need to succeed (Agner, 2020). Even if someone is familiar with the

principles of another culture, they may not know everything about it, and this lack of knowledge

can cause a range of issues when working in the medical sector.

Cultural humility, in my opinion, is the capacity to be open to learning about all

civilizations other than your own while simultaneously understanding that it is entirely normal

not to know everything there is to know about each culture. One particular group that my witing

targets is the Indian cohort. Their religious belief towards cows amazes me and shocks me. I

would feel biased in such a community since I have an unending desire for cow meat. My belief

towards this particular group is liberal. I feel that everyone has the freedom to choose the best

religion to be affiliated with and as such are bound to the religious doctrines. Humility is not

seen as a defect in this context; rather, it is seen as a person's capacity to acknowledge that their

comprehension of a culture different than their own is limited (Foronda, et al., 2018). Cultural

humility is a lifelong, never-ending learning process that reflects the complex idea of culture in

all of its manifestations.

If one thing struck out for me in the article, it was the difference between cultural

humility and cultural competency. Cultural humility is concerned with how an individual can use

the information about cultures that they do have. In contrast, cultural competency is concerned

with how an individual can utilize the information about societies that they do have. Regardless,

just because you attended a lecture on a particular culture does not mean you know everything

there is to know about that culture. Cultural humility and cultural competency combine to make

you a knowledgeable healthcare officer who is always learning new things. According to the

American Medical Association, cultural competence is defined as "the ability of medical services
providers and medical care organizations to perceive and respond viably to the cultural and

language demands brought by the patient to the medical services encounter" (Shaw, 2020). As

this definition illustrates, cultural competence is linked to delivering the most significant possible

attention to fulfill the patient's cultural requirements.

Cultural competence is built on a foundation of knowledge and understanding of

civilizations, and it is here that cultural humility comes into play. Cultural humility allows you to

constantly learn and understand communities and convictions, but without it, it would be

impossible to be culturally literate and equipped. In the manner that they manage to know and be

learned about other cultures other than your own, cultural competency and cultural humility

share a comparative skill in how they handle understanding and being learned about different

societies other than your own.

One of the numerous challenges in medical services is the assumption that all people

from the same culture will act the same way in all situations. People are eager to assume a

different alternative when they understand that each culture has variants of the same issue

(Shaw, 2020). When you make assumptions, you risk encountering an issue, which is quite

likely. The use of suppositions can lead to miscommunications, which could put the patient in

danger. Another big problem with presumptions is that they might be offensive to patients and

lead them to suffer due to the constraints of the medical care system. Minorities are now

experiencing a severe scarcity of medical care, and making assumptions about their needs does

nothing to help them.

Using Campinha Bacote’s model perspective in the context of medical care, social

competence is defined as a continuous cycle in which the medical care provider strives to

develop the capacity to operate successfully within the customer's social environment. Therefore,
it is important for the healthcare officer to understand the cultural setting in which the intended

services are needed. According to the model the healthcare giver must be conversant with the

integration of cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, cultural skills and encounters to be able to

perform effectively. In the model, the specific aspects of cultural competence are denoted as

awareness of the health giver’s own biasness and prejudice when working with those of other

cultures, developing skills in the hospital that will enable the caregiver be culturally competent,

the health giver should have an in-depth knowledge of how the culture affects the individual’s

physical and mental wellness and finally the desire to be culturally competent since this acts as a

driving energy that makes it possible for the healthcare giver to learn new cultures.

In conclusion, I have learnt that providing professional medical treatment necessitates a

high level of cultural humility and expertise. Before claiming to be culturally savvy, one must

first comprehend the differences between the two and how they interact. Understanding and

applying your knowledge of various groups is one component of being culturally competent in

medical services. A good medical care practitioner should be continually learning new things

about varied societies and religious views that are different from their own in order to deliver

effective medical treatment (Agner, 2020). One will be well on their way to becoming a

culturally competent medical care provider once you grasp that cultural humility is a long-term

learning process rather than an end result.

 References

Agner, J. (2020). Moving from cultural competence to cultural humility in occupational therapy:

A paradigm shift. The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 74(4),

7404347010p1-7404347010p7. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2020.038067

Foronda, C. L., Baptiste, D., Pfaff, T., Velez, R., Reinholdt, M., Sanchez, M., & Hudson, K. W.

(2018). Cultural competency and cultural humility in simulation-based education: An

integrative review. Clinical Simulation in Nursing, 15, 42-

60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecns.2017.09.006

Shaw, E. K. (2020). The role of cultural competence and cultural humility in achieving health

equity. Health Equity. https://doi.org/10.1891/9780826177247.0018