How can community health nurses apply the strategies of cultural competence to their
practice? Provide at least one example from each of four strategies: cultural preservation,
cultural accommodation, cultural re–patterning, and cultural brokering. What is a
possible barrier to applying the strategy/example chosen? Use an example that is different
than the postings of other students.
PLEASE ENSURE THAT REFERENCES ARE NO LATER THAN 1 YR
Cultural Competence among Community Health Nurses
It is extremely important for community health nurses to be able to appreciate,
comprehend, as well as interact with patients from a wide range of belief systems and cultures.
According to Campinha-Bacote (2012), this ensures delivery of cultural competent care.
Cultural preservation
Community health nurses should use and support cultural practices that are supported
scientifically so as to enhance health care. Scientific evidence supports physical fitness among
pregnant women so as to ease delivery. Therefore, a nurse can support this practice among
pregnant community members through various forms of exercises. One of the challenges that can
hinder some forms of exercise is if the mother has excess oedema.
Cultural accommodation
Cultural accommodation implies that the community nurse facilitates and supports the
utilization of cultural practices that are not regarded as harmful to the client’s health (Beach et
al., 2012). A nurse can support and facilitate male circumcision in a community. In case male
circumcision is not practiced in a certain community, it would be a challenge since those who
undergo through it may be considered as outcasts.
CULTURAL COMPETENCE AMONG COMMUNITY HEALTH NURSES
Cultural repatterning
Community nurses should work with clients so as to makes transformations in health
practices in cases where cultural behaviours are detrimental and result to worse well-being. The
Hispanic women believe that they should not breastfeed their babies immediately after birth but
should wait until the breast milk comes in. meanwhile, they feed their babies using a bottle. A
community health nurse should encourage a Hispanic woman to breastfeed the baby immediately
after birth so as to create bond with the baby and promote milk production. One of the challenge
towards this strategy is if the mother has gone into coma after delivering.
Cultural brokering
It is worthwhile for community health nurses to intervene, negotiate, mediate, and
advocate between a patient’s culture and the culture within biomedical health care on the client’s
behalf (Purnell & Paulanka, 2013). A community health nurse should intervene in cases where a
client’s culture does not embrace technologies such as X-ray during diagnosis of cancer. The
biomedical health care culture promotes the use of X-rays to enable better diagnosis and
treatment.
A possible barrier to applying this strategy is the patient’s resistance bearing in mind that
his consent has to be obtained before the X-ray.
CULTURAL COMPETENCE AMONG COMMUNITY HEALTH NURSES
References
Beach, M. C., Price, E. G., Gary, T. L., Robinson, K. A., Gozu, A., Palacio, A. & Cooper, L. A.
(2012). Cultural competency: a systematic review of health care provider educational
interventions. Medical care, 43(4), 356.
Campinha-Bacote, J. (2012). The process of cultural competence in the delivery of healthcare
services: A model of care. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 13(3), 181-184.
Purnell, L. D., & Paulanka, B. J. (2013). Transcultural health care. New York: FA Davis.