The Importance of Cultural Competence in Nursing
Understanding and Addressing Diverse Patient Needs
Among nearly eight billion people on Earth, there are countless different cultures and belief systems—it’s a huge part of what makes our world such a beautiful place. Throughout your nursing career, you’re certain to encounter individuals from a variety of backgrounds, and each one of them deserves the same high standard of care.
Cultural competence is one of the most important skills you’ll develop in your nursing career. Making every patient feel heard and understood enables better communication and rapport, which ultimately leads to better health outcomes for the people under your care.
In this article, we’ll explore the importance of cultural competence in nursing and review some strategies nurses can use to ensure every patient is treated with dignity and respect.
Still trying to decide if nursing is the right career choice for you? Check out our in-depth guide on how to become a registered nurse, or explore our list of the 16 highest-paid nursing jobs.
What Is Cultural Competence?
Cultural competence describes nurses’ ability to care for people from a range of ethnic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds. Understanding and appreciating cultural differences is vital for nurses to fulfill their responsibility of providing every patient with the highest-quality care.
Many nursing experts describe cultural competence as consisting of four key areas: awareness, attitude, knowledge, and skills.
Awareness
Everyone has their own values and built-in biases—it’s just a part of being human. Becoming aware of our own assumptions about people from various backgrounds (and how we react to them, both consciously and subconsciously) is an essential first step of developing cultural competence.
Attitude
This is what allows an honest evaluation of our own behaviors and belief systems. Openly acknowledging our own biases isn’t a character judgment or a reason for shame—it’s a sign of growth and part of understanding how to improve our interactions with others.
Knowledge
Even with lots of training and experience, nurses should always remain curious and open to learning new things about other cultures and their beliefs. As we discover more about the social determinants of health and work to address disparities within healthcare, nurses must keep their cultural competency up to date to provide the care their patients deserve.
Skills
This is where the concepts of cultural competency turn into action through skills like effective communication, respectful body language, and other behaviors that make a diverse range of patients feel at ease. For example, a gesture that’s friendly in one culture might be considered offensive in another. Nurses must be keenly aware of these differences to effectively communicate and connect with their patients.
The Role of Cultural Competence in Nursing
If there’s one thing that’s universal among all people, it’s the desire to be accepted for who we are. Cultural competence is paramount in delivering patient-centered care that considers the unique needs of each individual.
By personalizing care to each patient in a way that makes them feel respected and included, nurses can improve both communication and trust with their patients. This rapport-building leads to more accurate diagnoses, more effective treatments, and more satisfied patients.
Culturally competent nursing care is a massive factor in addressing health inequities and achieving the best outcomes for every patient. Aside from making patients more comfortable and less anxious, it encourages better preventative care, greater compliance with treatment plans, and more effective management of chronic conditions.
Developing Cultural Competence: Key Strategies for Nurses
Because cultural competence is such a vital component of nursing care, it gets plenty of attention during nursing school. Any accredited Bachelor of Science in Nursing program should help nurses build a solid foundation of cultural awareness, including health beliefs and communication styles common among varying cultures. It’s also common for nurses to expand their cultural knowledge throughout their careers by way of continuing education courses, workshops, or nursing publications.
Beyond simply fulfilling their formal educational requirements, nurses should also engage in ongoing self-reflection to identify their own biases. Cultural competence is never a finished project—as we learn more about how different groups experience the world, it’s critical for our own understanding and behaviors to continue evolving. (Think about some of the commonly-used words or phrases from 20-30 years ago that we now understand to be harmful.)
Approaching every patient interaction with the intent to actively listen and understand helps nurses deliver culturally competent care without resorting to stereotypes. By encouraging trust and open communication in a safe environment, nurses can form stronger connections with their patients—and ultimately provide better-informed care that meets their individual needs.
Addressing Health Disparities through Cultural Competence
The digital age and the rise of health data analytics have enabled some eye-opening insights about how people of diverse backgrounds experience the healthcare system. People of color, people of lower socioeconomic status, people with disabilities, and people in rural areas all face numerous health-related obstacles. These disparities may manifest as increased risk for certain conditions, reduced access to care—and even differences in the quality of care they receive.
By understanding the challenges each of these groups face, nurses are able to deliver personalized care that helps address health disparities. Hospitals and healthcare organizations also have a responsibility to provide the resources nurses need to overcome cultural barriers.
Some practical methods nurses and healthcare organizations can use to deliver more culturally competent care include:
Language services – Hiring multilingual staff or professional interpreters encourages effective patient communication and enables important cultural insights for the entire care team.
Culturally tailored education – Patient education materials that consider unique values, customs, and even dietary habits encourage greater compliance and understanding.
Culturally adapted treatment plans – When appropriate and safe, modifying healthcare plans to accommodate cultural practices can go a long way for patients and their families.
The Impact of Cultural Competence on Patient-Provider Relationships
Cultural sensitivity is a significant factor in establishing trust between patients and their healthcare providers. It signals to the patient that the care team has their best interest in mind, and truly cares about their needs as an individual. This show of respect makes patients more receptive to treatment, and more likely to keep following their treatment plan once they’re back in their home environment.
Any healthcare provider will tell you that patient adherence is a constant struggle. Providing culturally competent care increases the odds that patients will take their prescriptions as directed, show up to their follow-up appointments, and make the meaningful lifestyle changes that are often needed to manage many health issues.
As an example of how this could work, consider a patient who is struggling to manage their Type 2 diabetes. A culturally competent care plan might include dietary advice that incorporates traditional foods frequently enjoyed by their family rather than asking a patient to completely change the way they’ve eaten their entire lives.
Another scenario might involve a Muslim patient who is hesitant about receiving certain medical procedures during Ramadan. By working with local religious authorities to develop alternatives that accommodate the patient’s beliefs without compromising their health, nurses can build trust with the patient and keep them engaged in their care plan.
Challenges to Achieving Cultural Competence in Nursing
Despite the best efforts of nursing programs, hospital administrators, and individual nurses, there are several challenges to providing culturally competent care. Due to the sheer depth and variety of backgrounds and cultural beliefs, there’s only so much detail that’s possible to cover during nursing programs and formal training sessions. To counter this, nurses should treat their cultural knowledge as a career-long process rather than a one-and-done item on a checklist.
Time constraints are another major factor that can impact culturally tailored care. When nurses have an overwhelming number of patients under their watch, it can be tough to connect with patients and learn about their individual needs. Limited hospital resources can also be a serious challenge for providing culturally informed healthcare. Without sufficient language services or education materials, nurses will have a difficult time understanding and addressing their patients’ concerns.
Just like nurses have a responsibility to provide culturally competent care, healthcare organizations have a responsibility to make it possible. Hiring a diverse, multicultural staff of providers that represents the patients they serve is a great place to start. Healthcare institutions can also focus on organized training sessions, partnerships with community organizations, and a workplace culture that prioritizes and rewards cultural competence.
Finally, nurses must remember that cultural competence is an ongoing process rather than a fixed destination, and there’s always more to learn. Cultural beliefs and identities will continue to shift over time, and staying open-minded to new perspectives is one of the best things any nurse can do for themselves and their patients.
Become a Culturally Competent Nurse at Provo College
Learning how to interact respectfully with a myriad of cultures is one of the most essential skills for any nursing student to develop. And by expanding your cultural knowledge throughout your career, you’ll be remembered fondly by countless patients as the nurse who made them feel safe during a difficult time.
When considering different nursing schools, make sure you choose a BSN program with an up-to-date curriculum that reflects the latest developments in cultural competence. In the Bachelor of Science in Nursing program at Provo College, you’ll be mentored by seasoned nurses who can share firsthand experiences of providing culturally informed care to people from all walks of life. We pride ourselves on preparing career-ready nurses with the cultural and clinical skills to serve patients from all around the world.
Planning to enroll soon? Check out our helpful guide on how to prepare for nursing school.
