CLAS standards

I searched for the cultural competencies specific to nursing since that is my intended major. When comparing what I found to the CLAS standards, a big area of difference I noticed was that the nursing standards specifically mention self reflection on the part of the nurse. The idea is that s/he is able to actively acknowledge his or her own beliefs and values and then determine how that might affect his or her ability to provide care to a multitude of different patients. I think this is pretty critical in healthcare as we have seen the importance of understanding and acknowledging the validity of differing views.

An area of similarity is the cross cultural communication. Both the CLAS standards and the nursing standards focus on the importance of communicating effectively to a patient in a language that s/he will understand as well as non verbal cues that may be different for people from certain cultures. The fact that this is on both lists just highlights how important it really is to providing culturally competent care.

The site I found the nursing standards is:  http://tcns.org/files/StandardsofPracticeforCulturallyCompetentNursingCarearticle.pdf

Goals

After looking over the course objectives again and reflecting on my results from the quiz we took, I came up with three goals for myself that I would like to achieve, or at least make significant progress toward.

Goal 1. Learn the major differences between cultures and how that pertains to healthcare.

Goal 2. Actively adjust my preconceptions about different ethnicities and cultures

Goal 3. Open my medical knowledge to include what we in the west often call alternative medicine and acknowledge its benefits, both real and unsubstantiated, to patients.

How our beliefs affect how we care for others

Prior to taking this quiz, and truthfully reading some of the material thus far in the class, I never would have thought that any beliefs or prejudices I have would affect the level of care I would give patients. We all have prejudices even when we don't express them, I believe that is just human nature. I've been working in customer facing service jobs for almost two decades now so I have learned to not let them affect how I treat people. However after taking this quiz I can definitely see some areas for improvement. Weeding through my results I saw my biggest problem was actually reading the question incorrectly when it asked to choose the one that was NOT something. That is of course something I need to work on because it shows that I jump to conclusions without patiently and attentively reading/listening!

Aside from those errors though, I am finding that one of my biggest areas of opportunity is the understanding of non-Western medicinal views. I am very much a medicine and scientific/technological intervention type of person. I would never openly express to a patient that I thought their views on acupuncture or shamanism were ridiculous but I would definitely struggle with finding the value in it, especially over medical practice. I think I could understand the need they have to do it in addition to what western medicine and science has to offer them, but I think it will definitely take me some time to adjust to the idea that they wouldn't choose the proven scientific method first. This is a huge area for me when it comes to people opting out of vaccinating their children for religious or other reasons.

I am looking forward to learning more about different perspectives and cultural views on health and wellness and how I can incorporate this into my future work.

Test Post

Just a test post to see that I did this correctly.