Introduction
The mission and vision statements of healthcare organizations include a variety of crucial issues such as taking care of patients’ welfare, providing the medical employees with the necessary equipment, and being fair and unprejudiced to patients’ gender, age, or ethnicity. However, there is another essential component to be included in hospitals’ vision and mission – cultural competence of the patients. Awareness of the cultural preferences of the customers allows doctors and nurses to provide their clients with the best healthcare solutions.
Assessment
Baptist Hospital of Miami (Baptist Health South Florida) pays attention to cultural competence, which is reflected in the hospital’s mission and vision. The hospital has a statement regarding a strong corporate culture based on integrity and ethical standards (“Fulfilling our mission,” 2017). However, there is no theoretical framework specifically related to culturally competent care. Therefore, I find it necessary to employ such a framework.
Powell Sears (2012) suggests an intersectional framework of cultural competence. I believe that this framework would fit well into our healthcare facility. The framework is based on the belief that ethnic and racial minority groups have a variety of social statuses (locations). These statuses collaborate to form the views on health, experiences, and needs of the people within these groups (Powell Sears, 2012). Thus, cultural competence education should exceed the conventionalized cultural beliefs and investigate the more complex meanings. According to Powell Sears (2012), the employment of the intersectional framework can enhance the doctors’ and nurses’ ability to communicate with patients from diverse groups and understand their needs.
The roles of our hospital’s nurses in employing cultural competence in the workplace environment are diverse. First of all, they provide care in accordance with the patients’ beliefs. Secondly, the nurses express tolerance and acknowledgment of every religion. Thirdly, they do their best to provide patients with traditional or clinical treatment as the beliefs determine the customers’ choice of treatment type. Next, every employee in the hospital finds it crucial to maintain equality among affiliated and disaffiliated patients. In spite of these endeavors, there is always room for improvement in cultural competence. Educational programs should be developed regularly, and every healthcare worker should participate in them.
The two specific culturally diverse populations we most often work with are White Americans and Black Americans. White Americans are the basis of the US population in general, and they constitute a considerable part of our patients in particular. Most of the people belonging to this population group have a medium or high income, which allows them to afford expensive treatment. However, since the religions and beliefs vary so greatly within one race, it is sometimes impossible to provide the necessary treatment.
A specific feature of this group is the preference for clinical guidelines-related practices. What concerns the African American group, they statistically have smaller income rates and frequently are in poverty. Although expensive treatment is sometimes unavailable, the hazardous environment of African American neighborhoods leads to an increased need to treat less complicated conditions (trauma, intoxication, gunshot wound, etc.). Religious beliefs mostly do not interfere with the patient’s need to receive any treatment. There is one most prevalent religion that does not prohibit either traditional or clinical approaches to treatment.
There are no tools in my workplace that would help with the cultural education of the two described populations. Therefore, it is necessary to come up with some approaches to implement such tools. Moreover, the hospital does not cooperate with any organizations that would help with the cultural education of the two populations. Since such cooperation would enhance the nurses’ cultural competence greatly, it seems reasonable that we could cooperate with some religious organizations, shelters, or centers for the disaffiliated people.
Plan
Based on the assessment of Baptist Health South Florida, the following S.M.A.R.T. goals are suggested:
- To introduce transcultural nursing education in the hospital and create tools that would help nurses to obtain cultural education of the two specific population groups. This specific goal is measurable, as it is possible to obtain it within a specific period of time. Though it may require some time to implement it, this goal is realistic, and there will be enough time to carry it out.
- To employ online learning strategies and provide necessary assistance for the nurses to learn with the help of these strategies. This specific goal may also present a challenge in relation to time, but with an appropriate approach, it is attainable, measurable, and realistic. Online learning is easily accessible, and with a specifically developed training program, every nurse will be able to engage in this process.
- To create a theoretical framework specifically related to culturally competent care. This goal is a rather significant one, as currently, the hospital does not have any theoretical framework associated with culturally competent care. Creating a framework will enable the unification of all nurses’ endeavors to satisfy the needs of the two specific population groups. Also, it will enhance the accommodation process for new employees who will have a strong basis for their professional conduct.
Intervention
Goals and Interventions Related to Them
The first goal is concerned with the introduction of transcultural nursing education in the Baptist Hospital of Miami. Due to their sphere of work, nurses need to be aware of their patients’ needs derived from cultural divergences and be able to cultivate the skills necessary for the better understanding of these needs (Prosen, 2015). The goal necessitates two interventions based on the requirement of the employees to attend a series of cultural, educational meetings over the course of four months.
The first intervention is creating a series of eight educational meetings, including such topics as religion and beliefs, the probable contradictions between religious views and traditional treatment, and substitute types of treatment. The second intervention is concerned with the cooperation with hospital units’ leaders with the aim of identifying the times and locations of the educational meetings.
The second goal is implementing online learning strategies and providing assistance for the employees’ access to them. Online learning is acknowledged as one of the most effective and time-efficient methods of learning (Ellman et al., 2012). The course is planned for two months. In order to fulfill this goal, three interventions are necessary. The first one is dedicated to creating a working group that will design a set of online learning courses and materials.
The second intervention is forming a team of leaders that will assign the tasks to the subordinates and think of the ways of assessing the level of coping with the course. The third intervention is organizing a general meeting two times during the online learning process (at the end of each month) where nurses and leaders will discuss the peculiarities of online learning and the ways in which in benefits or challenges their cultural competence.
The third goal is developing a theoretical framework specifically related to culturally competent care. Since our hospital does not have such a framework, it is of utmost importance to start creating it as soon as possible. The goal presupposes two interventions. The first one is getting acquainted with the specifications of the intersectional framework and considering its benefits for the hospital’s mission and vision.
The intersectional framework is considered a successful method of cultural competence education as it specifies a set of beliefs concerning the experiences of groups of people that have religious, cultural, or economic peculiarities (Jones, Kim, & Skendall, 2012). The second intervention is getting the nurses acquainted with the accepted framework and helping them to percept its peculiarities, which will enable unanimous approaches to the two specific groups of population and will increase the hospital’s rating.
Plan of Education
Taking into consideration the peculiarities of the specific populations, it is necessary to develop a detailed plan of education for all nurses working at the Baptist Hospital of Miami. The plan will incorporate several essential components. It will consider the organizations I chose to explore with the aim of enhancing nurses’ understanding of patients’ needs, the role of transcultural nursing care, and the specific cultural care competencies of the patients. Also, the plan will address the ways in which the nurses should evaluate their communication with the patients and the impact of this interaction on patients’ culture.
The organizations I decided to explore are centers for disaffiliated people, shelters, and religious institutions. The planned cooperation with shelters and centers for disaffiliated people is necessary to investigate the needs of one of the specific population groups: African Americans. These people are exposed to difficult living and working conditions, and collaboration with the mentioned organizations will allow the nurses to identify the most general causes of health deterioration of this population group, as well as get in touch with their probable patients and make contact with them.
What concerns religious organizations, it is necessary to address them as they can explain the peculiarities of White Americans’ attitudes to the traditional methods of treatment. In these organizations, nurses may receive the necessary knowledge of the non-traditional treatment approaches preferred by the patients and try to combine these ways with the traditional ones. In such a way, nurses will find better approaches to help their customers, and patient satisfaction levels will be increased.
The next stage of the educational plan is concerned with teaching nurses about the specific cultural care competencies of the patients and the role of transcultural nursing. Comprehending the cultural care competencies demands such abilities as learning the common and divergent features of different cultures, planning and implementation of interventions for the patients from different cultural environment, gathering information about patients’ attitudes towards treatment methods, comparing the health of illness opinions of the patients from different cultures, fulfilling the customers’ needs, and setting the nursing objectives for people from various cultural backgrounds (Perng & Watson, 2012).
The role of transcultural nursing in this process cannot be overestimated. Researchers remark that there is a variety of cultural factors influencing patients’ health (Easterby et al., 2012; Holland, 2015). Therefore, transcultural nursing is valuable since it gives insight into the peculiarities of the specific groups’ cultural life that impact their health and attitudes to treatment.
Another significant element of the education plan is teaching nurses about the necessity of establishing and maintaining the positive communication patterns and the impact of such communication on patients’ culture. No matter what experience a person has or how well-trainer he or she is, patients’ satisfaction level highly depends on the way in which a nurse interacts with them. Therefore, it is essential to teach nurses about positive communication techniques. Moreover, it is necessary to instruct them about self-evaluation methods so that they would be able to see whether their chosen type of conduct is suitable or unacceptable. Since we are dealing with patients from diverse cultural environments, it is necessary to take into consideration all possible aspects and complications caused by cultural divergences.
The mentioned aspects are necessary to be included in the education plan since each aspect separately and all of them in integrity make up a successful strategy for the hospital in an endeavor to achieve a high cultural competence awareness. The implementation of this plan will allow nurses to reach the highest levels of patient satisfaction and make the Baptist Hospital of Miami favored by customers from diverse cultural backgrounds who can be sure that all of their needs will be satisfied here.
Conclusion
Baptist Hospital of Miami has a great reputation and serves large numbers of patients daily. The hospital’s organization is rather good, but it lacks one significant element – paying attention to the customers’ cultural competence. The proposed goals, interventions, and education plan are aimed at reaching the best patient outcomes and maintaining the hospital’s positive image.
References
Easterby, L., Siebert, B., Woodfield, C. J., Holloway, C., Gilbert, P., Zoucha, R., & Turk, M. W. (2012). A transcultural immersion experience: Implications for nursing practice. The ABNF Journal, 23(4), 81-84.
Ellman, M. S., Schulman-Green, D., Blatt, L., Asher, S., Viveiros, D., Clark, J., & Bia, M. (2012). Using online learning and interactive simulation to teach spiritual and cultural aspects of palliative care to interprofessional students. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 15(11), 1240-1247.
Fulfilling our mission. (2017). Baptist Health South Florida. Web.
Holland, A. E. (2015). The lived experience of teaching about race in cultural nursing education. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 26(1), 92-100.
Jones, S. R., Kim, Y. C., & Skendall, K. C. (2012). (Re-) Framing authenticity: Considering multiple social identities using autoethnographic and intersectional approaches. The Journal of Higher Education, 83(5), 698-724.
Perng, S.-J., & Watson, R. (2012). Construct validation of the nurse cultural competence scale: A hierarchy of abilities. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 21(11-12), 1678-1684.
Powell Sears, K. (2012). Improving cultural competence education: The utility of an intersectional framework. Medical Education, 46(6), 545-551.
Prosen, M. (2015). Introducing transcultural nursing education: Implementation of transcultural nursing in the postgraduate nursing curriculum. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 174, 149-155.