...nursing has been controversial this was evident by nurse healers being viewed as witches in the middle ages. As Minkowski (1992) conclusion indicated the nurse healers were viewed as “creatures in the league of the devil” and currently, the media has been covering negative images of nursing. This media coverage includes images of neglect in nursing care, poor performance results and lawsuits. Ads on the local television channels by law firms reporting poor nursing care, the television show “Mash” calling a nurse “hot lips” on just about each show, and the television show “House” left the viewer to perceive nursing as almost obsolete, has negatively impacted the profession of nursing. To alleviate the negative perception and image of the nursing profession, education to the public will need to occur. Nurses have quietly accepted ignorance, regarding their profession, in the past, due to the lack of urgency in the matter. With the health care crisis, the profession of nursing has been a hot point topic. In Kazis et al.’s (2009) article that analyzed media coverage, it was suggested that the public has little understanding of what a nurse actually does. Personal collaboration with professional nursing organizations could give a nurse a voice in the regulatory process and help in the education of the general public. In conclusion, mastering public speaking on a professional nurse’s role coupled with joining forces with professional nursing organizations could be an avenue to educate...
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...aid in the positive outcomes and implementation of care. This is why it is important to not only understand the general practices and needs of our patient’s culture, but also have a firm grasp of our own beliefs and how we view and perceive other cultures. In the following, discussion of three different cultures will be explored and compared. The American Nurses’ Association’s code of ethics states “the profession’s commitment is to provide service to people regardless of background or situation”. (ANA, 1985) The diversity of our country is growing as the population as a whole increases. Healthcare today is faced with new challenges with regard to patient care due to the cultural differences and health beliefs. Heritage assessment is now a standard assessment that is integrated to ensure the proper care of an individual as a whole person and not just a patient with signs and symptoms. Many different beliefs and traditions need to be considered, as well as socio-economic status, family support systems, disability, and religion. All of these factors can contribute to the health and welfare of the individual. As nurses, we have an opportunity to bridge the gap and improve patient outcomes. Gaining the basic knowledge of...
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...CULTURE AND ETHICS IN GHANAIAN PROFESSIONAL LIFE Cultural elements invariably affect the delivery of professional services in whatsoever form. Professional practices are strongly guided by appropriate code of ethics. Sound ethical decision making is based on a process that involves multiple steps some of which are taken in advance and some of which are taken at the time ethical dilemma presents itself (Carter, Bennett, Jones & Naggy, 1999). The development and the application of ethical principles and standard in professional lives are strongly influenced by cultural elements. BREIF HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON WESTERN ETHICAL CODES The influence of culture on ethical professional practice could be traced back to the time of the development of some selected code of ethics. Professional codes in the West typically follow the Hippocratic tradition (Veatch, 19997) which is often acknowledged by both physicians and lay people as the foundation of medical ethics for physicians in the west. Among the Christian cultures, a new version of the Hippocratic oath called the oath According to Hippocrates insofar as a Christian may swear it (Jones, 1924), emerged for Christian physicians with some changes to reflect the culture of the Christian Kingdom. These includes removal of references to the Greek gods and goddesses, the dropping of the prohibition against surgery whilst strengthening the prohibition on abortion (Veatch, 19997). Similarly, the Percival’s medical ethics which...
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...the best care to the people of their lands. This paper will also dive into the history from which the techniques come and discuss how the changes that have been made to the techniques are changing the people and will continue to affect them into the future. One thing that is common and ubiquitous between the two tribes is that most of their knowledge was passed down orally. The primary healer in Mapuche medicine were the Machi, or Mapuche shaman. These shaman would use a variety of techniques to heal those who sought them which largely involved altered states of consciousness including dreams, visions and trances. In this altered state the Machi would often experience possession and rebirth. These techniques and stories were most commonly passed down orally through biographies and mythohistories which contain elements of normal linear story telling along with cyclical story telling. Time and events move along in a scientifically linear temporal fashion and yet events also repeat in similar formats, seeming to have ties to the past (Raimondi, 2013). In total there are three types of healers in Mapuche medicine including the Machi. As shared by Cruz-Coke (1995) the first is the Vileus. These individuals worked mostly after the arrival of the Spanish and believed that disease was caused by insects and worms. These beliefs are very similar to what is understood in modern, western medicine with most disease being caused by virus and bacteria. Besides the Machi, the other...
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...healthcare professionals in general and nurses in particular. What does it mean by health promotion and prevention? According to Edelman & Mandle (2010), it’s “the science and art of helping people change their lifestyles to move toward a state of optimal health” (p. 14). In other words, it’s the strategy used in purpose to increase a sense of well-living and to decrease episodes of illness that can happen to anyone at any age. By doing this, it helps lessen the expensive cost government and patients have to spend for the cure. Being alongside with the vulnerable population, nurses work as critical roles of advocates, healers, educators, and researchers throughout all three levels of promotion and prevention (Edelman & Mandle, 2010, p. 19-20). Primary Prevention The focus of the first level is to promote good health and to protect individuals from diseases. There’re many ways nurses can help with general health and with fighting specific illnesses. The most common ways include (1) educating benefit of vaccination, (2) giving vaccines, (3) instructing benefits of healthy diet and regular exercise, (4) lecturing STDs protections, etc. (Edelman & Mandle, 2010, p. 18). This process takes place at schools, clinics, offices, and hospitals. Altogether, nurses help people gain a better control to ward off illnesses for a healthier life. As for more complicated roles, nurses are advocates and leaders working with the government in forming healthcare policies. For example, nurses voice a...
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...Nursing RN-BSN Option I will discuss two theories and apply them to different vulnerable populations. Vulnerability is an important factor for nurses to consider when working with clients across the lifespan. Vulnerability is a result of uncontrollable individual factors over which the patient has no influence (Creasia & Feiberg, 2011). Vulnerability is a general concept meaning “susceptibility” and has a specific connotation in health care “at risk for health problems” (Chesnay & Anderson, 2012). The first theorist is Lydia Hall’s care, cure, and core theory. It refers to patients as having three needs of care: the physical, the medical, and the social needs. Nurses can easily provide the care, cure, and core theory to meet the needs of patients with congestive heart failure. Nurses using Lydia Hall’s theory assist with education, medical management, and provide physical, emotional or social support for congestive heart failure patients. The medical management and education offered by nurses increase patients knowledge, and the ability to manage their disease. They can prevent exacerbations, and reduce hospital readmissions (Davood, 2009). The care model dominates when nurses provide hands on care to the heart failure patients produces an environment of comfort and trust. It promotes open communication between nurses and patients. Open communication encourages the patient to express thoughts of fear and decrease their anxiety. Patients develop feelings of security...
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...Heritage Assessment Heritage is who we are, where we come from, it’s our history. Traditionally the word heritage means one back ground or tradition. Each individual’s heritage varies between different cultures and consists of determination of one’s ethnic, religious, and cultural background (Spector, 2009). The heritage assessment tool helps healthcare professionals evaluate someone’s physical, mental, and spiritual beliefs which in turn helps with determining traditional health methods such as health maintenance, health protection, and health restoration. It also helps in opening a pathway for effective communication between the patient and health care provider to understand ones culture, beliefs, as well as their health traditions. The greater the person’s identification with a traditional heritage, the greater number of positive responses they will have on the assessment (Spector, 2009). This paper will compare three heritages Hispanic, African American, and Chinese looking at the difference between health methods and traditions and will also assess the author’s heritage. Health maintenance is how one manages their health by preventing and promoting good health. The Hispanic cultures hold a very strong religious belief. The majority come from a Catholic background and relies heavily on God and prayer. They sometimes view good health as a reward from God and illness as a punishment for wrongdoing. Hispanics are very family oriented going beyond the nuclear family...
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...Running Head: HEALTHCARE AND THREE DISTINCT BELIEFS Diversity in Beliefs Each culture has its own beliefs regarding healing, health, faith, treatment, health care providers, and disease. Everyone's practices and beliefs are brought into the health care system, so it is important as nurses to respect each patient's faith and beliefs. It is hard as health care professionals who have been taught Western medicine to understand other beliefs, but it is important to remember as nurses the goal is to improve patient care. Hinduism Hinduism is believed to have begun from the beginning of time, since wisdom existed. Therefore, Hinduism has many founders. Hinduism is formed by more than hundreds of sacred scriptures. Lord Krishna is god manifested in human form. Hinduism teachers that healing is a side-effect of the spiritual processes. Hindus believe that a healthy body helps the patient to go deeper spiritually and doing so will also allow the body to relax and have energy. There are two main components that are believed to heal illnesses. First, Hatha Yoga and Pranayama which are breathing exercises which increases the body's immunity causing the healing process to go faster. Second, spiritual masters who have mastered the uses of subtle energies which they use to heal illnesses by touching or wishing. When my patient goes to the hospital for care, she does not wish to hear anything about religion, faith or beliefs. She prefers to know what her diagnosis and prognosis...
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...Heritage Assessment M. J. F. Grand Canyon University March 5, 2015 NRS 429 Relative to health, cultural values form human behaviors and determine what people will do to preserve their health status, how they will care for themselves and others who get sick, and from whom and where they will find health care. While the diversity of the American people is one of our best assets in this country, it is also creating one of our greatest challenges; to provide health equity, which means to provide the highest level of health for all people (Edelman, 2013). One step in accomplishing this is for nurses to have awareness and culturally competent practices in order to function successfully in this rapidly changing multicultural society. Learning about a patient’s heritage allows the nurse to create a patient centered plan of care that meets their cultural needs which will produce the best outcome. This document contains information gathered from families of Hispanic, Indian (from India) and Black (from Turks & Caicos Islands) descent. They were given the Heritage Assessment tool (Spector, 2000) to complete which helps determine how much a person identifies with a traditional heritage. Knowing how much they identify with a culture can give you insight into understanding their health values and behaviors. In addition, they were also asked questions about their health traditions, how they promote, maintain, and restore their health. The purpose of health protection and...
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...(2003). In the early days, Kapu system was followed, enabling them to prosper and live peacefully with nature, unfortunately, with our growing love of technology and industry, less and less Kapu can be followed. In recognition of this, it has sparked an integration of Hawaiian healing and western medicine for the development of preventive health programs and treatment plans of the Hawaiian people. In fact, on the Waianae Coast of Oahu where most of the Native descendants reside, Hawaiian healing medicine is the treatment of choice. To theses natives, an environment that a healer offers is preferred over that of a physician’s office or hospital. It is said that there approximately 60-80 Kahunas in Hawaii. These Kahunas are integrated into the health care system. Kahunas do not consider themselves replacements for Western-trained physicians, nor do they clam to cure folks. The Kahunas do what they are best known for, taking all the time needed to develop a strong interpersonal relationship with the patient so that they can give love and positive spirit, after all the Kapu system is what they aim to achieve. Kahunas never ask for payment and the positive environment that is provided helps empower the patient and facilitates the healing process. (Hilgenkamp, K., Pescaia, C....
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...healthcare varies between cultures, nurses have historically taken on many different roles: a folk healer, a healer with religious ties, and that of a servant (Ellis & Hartley, 2012). Because of these various roles, some may not realize, or accept, that nursing has evolved into a much needed profession. This essay will discuss what a profession is, the criteria needed to be present in order to be considered a profession, and the reasons why nursing should be considered a profession. Criteria of a Profession In order to understand why I consider nursing a profession, you must first understand the meaning of the word. There are many varied definitions of the word profession. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines profession as a noun meaning “a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation” (n.d.). Harkreader, Hogan, and Thobaben build on the previous core definition by including five criteria: “provides an essential service to society, has a theoretical body of knowledge, requires relative independence in decision making in practice, requires specialized education, and has a code of ethics for behavior of its members” (p.2, 2007). Examples of how nursing meets each of these criteria of a profession are listed below. Provides an Essential Service to Society. Nurses provide a service that is unable to be substituted by any other member of the healthcare team. The body of knowledge that nurses hold can only be obtained through...
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...an array of administrative responsibilities, and the development of organizational policies and procedures. It establishes organizational ethics by which employees are requested to follow. This includes the professional conduct required of health professionals in the use of social media in the workplace. According to Brent (2011), "Social networking is the main source of communicating in today's society" (para. 1). Mobile communications, E-mail, Texting, and the use of Facebook and Twitter has set record breaking rates above any other form of communications in recent years (Badzek, 1998). Social networking empowers both the consumer and the health care provider. The use of the Internet plays an important role in finding health information, which allow the patient to become better informed concerning personal health, and more educated in decision-making. Health care providers also benefit by conducting real-time meetings online to discuss the most challenging cases, and to devise solutions to improve therapeutic regimens of patients. Health care providers are driven by professional connections and timely communications with patients, families, and other health care providers. Social networking is the media by which health care providers use for a range of professional purposes, primarily to educate patients or to foster provider-patient relationships, which is impressive. Although social networking has tremendous benefits to the consumer and provider, it comes with strong...
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...important for nurses to focus on the areas of individual, family, community, socioeconomic, cultural and environmental. This process allows people to reach their tremendous health potential for self-change by new behaviors and improves their environment and activities for disease prevention. In addition to the concept of health promotion, it includes health information, reliable resources and health promotion activities to achieve better quality of life and well-being. Currently, Pender, Murdaugh & Parsons (2011) describes that “health promotion is behavior motivated by the desire to increase well-being and actualize human health potential” (p. 5). The purpose of health promotion is nursing practice is to incorporate with people to make choices and decisions for engaging healthy behaviors to have health lifestyles in multidimensional areas, such as cultural and socioeconomic dimensions. As changes in nursing practice and education, nurse’s professional role and responsibilities have expended and nurses have more opportunities to play a central role in peoples’ health care. To better assist people to recognize health problems and to choose effective ways for preventing diseases and promoting longevity, nurses need to work as educator, advocate, care managers, consultant, services, healer, and researcher. In many instances, nurses may have more direct contacts with patients or public than other members in the health disciplinary teams; and it is necessary for nurses to educate people...
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...is imperative that we continue to become culturally aware in our communities to continue to provide competent and safe care. Each individual’s heritage needs to be respected and for that to happen, nurses need to educate themselves with values and beliefs of other cultures and be considerate of a patients heritage. “Cultural heritage is an expression of the ways of living developed by a community and passed on from generation to generation, including customs, practices, places, objects, artistic expressions and values” (ICOMOS 2002). A person may represent their heritage through beliefs, ideas, and prayers and may be visible in their everyday attire or just thoughts and actions. By assessing a patient properly a nurse can identify a patients background and have an idea of how to respect their beliefs, health practices and this will help educate the patient when considering how they make health care decisions The health assessment tool has been created to help guide this process and help ensure a positive outcome. With this tool a health care professional can provide individualized care that is culturally appropriate. In an interview with 3 different families, Nicaraguan, Nigerian, Pilipino, the assessment tool has helped compare and contrast the different cultures and how a nurse would have to adjust to these three different families. One major comparison to be noted is that all three countries have similar political and economic troubles. With government help being scant...
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...and doctors offices are now emphasizing the need for nurses to be aware of the diverse needs of many differing cultures. Learning and understanding Leininger’s transcultural nursing theory can assist the nurse in incorprating culturally competent care into their practice. Nursing standards regarding cultural commpetence are changing as more immigrants are entering this country and the health care system. Statistics According the the US Census Bureau in 2000 30% of the US population was an ethnicity other than non-hispanic whites. The projection is that it will reach 50% by the year 2050, while currently 90% of all nurses are caucasian (Maier-Lorentz, 2008). Brought into working terms that means that if a nurse has a six patient assignment, approximately two of the six will be from another culture and have different needs and beliefs. Nursing care revolves around giving holistic care to each patient. In order to provide holistic care to patients the nurse must be aware of the individual needs of that patients. The patients cultural background will determine what those needs are. If a nurse is unaware of the cultural needs, there is no way to provide a plan of care to meet the individual needs. Leininger’s Cultural Care Theory Leininger’s culture care theory is the first theory to be based on the cultural sameness (culture universal) and differences (culture-specific) that determine the plan of care for any patient. Nurses striving to care for patients holistically must understand...
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