The term culturally competent care refers to nursing care that is sensitive to issues regarding culture, race, gender, and sexual orientation. Cultural competence is a process in which the nurse strives to achieve the ability to effectively work within the cultural context of an individual, family, or community from a diverse cultural/ethnic background. Since the perception of illness and disease and their causes varies by culture, these individual preferences affect the approaches to health care. Culture also influences how people seek health care and how they behave toward health care providers. How we care for patients and how patients respond to this care is greatly influenced by culture. Health care providers must possess the ability and knowledge to communicate and to understand health behaviors influenced by culture. Having this ability and knowledge can eliminate barriers to the delivery of health care. These issues show the need for health care organizations to develop policies, practices and procedures to deliver culturally competent care, as prerequisites to working effectively in global health.
Successfully integrating cultural diversity requires an atmosphere of acceptance and respect as it can be a catalyst for generating new ideas, knowledge, partnership, productivity, and creativity. Cultural issues are intertwined with socio-economic and political issues and is committed to social justice as central to the social mandate of nursing. Cultural safety is both a process and an outcome whose goal is to promote greater equity. It focuses on root causes of power imbalances and inequitable social relationships in health care. Cultural safety includes cultural awareness, cultural sensitivity and cultural competence. Cultural competence and cultural safety are prerequisites to working effectively in global health.
Muslim patients have special dietary