A literature review- “Educating For Diversity” conduct a review of current literature
(within the past five years) Peer reviewed that addresses the challenges the nurse educators
may face within a diverse educational setting. The focus should be on the effect of different
factors ( for example, multiculturalism, age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status) on
learning cultural barriers to learning that may arise, and best practices the nurse educator
might employ. Critique the strategies. Are they appropriate for all diverse populations?
Could they be used in nursing education in any setting, or only in very specific situations?
how will you manage any conflict that may arise in your classroom? this should be 3 pages
Educating For Diversity
The world has become a global village making people from different cultural groups to
interact and socialize. Health care is not an exception as many healthcare professional work in
different social settings. The educators face many challenges in their educational setting based on
various differences in terms of demographic factors such as the age, gender, ethnicity, language,
religious, and multiculturalism and socioeconomic among others.
Ethnicity is one of the major problems that educators face in this age and time when
working in a different cultural setting (El-amouri & O’neill, 2011). Different ethnic groups have
different language they speak and use different signs and symbols to ascribe to certain meaning.
It therefore becomes a challenge to work in such an environment especially when one does not
understand the language spoken by the other colleagues. Educationists therefore, are at cross
road because it becomes a challenge to teach and to educate fellow colleagues. Nurse to nurse as
well as nurse to client relationships becomes a bit complex because of the language. Therefore,
such barriers affect the learning process of the practitioners as it may require another person to
interpret the language. This becomes very hectic and at the same time consuming. It also raises
suspicion on the quality of learning as there are cases where interpreters may miss out important
aspects or may intentionally misguide the audience affecting the process of learning. Therefore,
communication problems pose a big problem among educators in different ethnic settings.
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Overcoming this challenge requires that the educators invest their time and money to learn new
languages and the cultural practices of different people to accustom with the same (El-amouri &
O’neill, 2011). This will help to alleviate this challenges that may have negative implications on
the learning process.
Another best practice that nurse may employ in such circumstances is to respect and
embrace the norms and values of the majority people in that setting (El-amouri & O’neill, 2011).
Sometimes these values and norms may not be appealing to an educator, but for the sake of
creating harmony and peaceful coexistence, the nurse must respect them. Failure to will lead to
conflicts and resentment and the nurse duties will be crippled. He/she will fail to render good
services to the clients and this may amount to job termination for failing to meet the threshold
set.
The nurse may also seek assistance for translators to ensure that they communicate with
the other members of the community to enhance service delivery. The nurses may appoint
someone versed with the language to be a translator (El-amouri & O’neill, 2011). This will help
to solve the problem of cross culture communication at that particular moment, as the nurse will
be able to understand the client. The nurses can also use visual aids to support their
communication. These aids include symbols, signs, pictures, diagrams, translation books, written
cards, videos and dictionaries (El-amouri & O’neill, 2011). Memo can also be used to enhance
communication in this kind of an environment.
The hospital can also act as a facilitator in helping the nurses that are not acquainted with
the language learn and become familiar with the same. This can be achieved by the hospital
creating a conducive environment where, employee can find some time to interact with one
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another, and share the values of the community member (El-amouri & O’neill, 2011). It can also
use workshops and seminars to deliberate on the issues of diversity to allow both the employees
and the clients to understand the aspects of diversity and the need to embrace one another.
Even though these strategies are appropriate and have the capability to trigger positive
outcome they may not be suitable to apply in all the situations/ diverse populations. The reason
why this may not be possible is that cultures have different practices, norms and values that they
embrace. The other does not necessarily appreciate what is cherished by one society becoming a
challenge. In the case of language among people from different ethnicities, the meaning and
symbols attributed to certain words does not mean similar things. Therefore, it will be important
to be vigilant and receptive to different people that come from different cultures. This will help
to reduce misunderstandings in communication and even conflicts among people from different
cultures.
In nurse education, these strategies can be used in most of the situations where the nurse
educator do not share the cultures and do not understand the language spoken by the other
members. It is important, that such nurse find, translators, be supported by the organization and
take an initiative to read and to learn the language and cultures of the other community. They
must also respect the culture, norms values of the other community for them to command respect
from the other members of the community.
Conflicts are inherent and managing them is the most important aspect. In my classroom,
I will manage conflicts by first seeking to understand the source of the conflict. After
determining the source, I will then allow the members to talk and present their views. I will make
them to understand the best way to solve conflict is by s communicating and reaching an
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agreement. Therefore, my conflict resolution strategy is to go to the root cause so that such
conflict does not occur again.
In conclusion, working in a diverse population present various challenges but
approaching the challenges in amicable way ensures that a lasting solution is reached. Nurse
educators therefore can use these strategies to manage such conflicts in their course of rendering
training services.
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Reference
El-amouri, S., & O’neill, S. (2011). Supporting cross-cultural communication and culturally
competent care in the linguistically and culturally diverse hospital settings of UAE.
Contemporary Nurse: A Journal for the Australian Nursing Profession, 39(2): 240-255.