Reflection For Art And Science Of Nursing Care: Impact Of Personal Cultural Identity, Values, Beliefs, And Behaviours On Healthcare Practice

Reflection on personal cultural identity, values, beliefs and behaviours and their Impact of personal cultural values, beliefs and behaviours on my functionality as a healthcare practitioner

Discuss about the case study Reflection for Art and Science of Nursing Care.

Providing healthcare is a profession apart from treatment that depends on sensitive factors like care, communication, psychopathy, concern, understanding and support. These factors directly depend on the psychological and personal potential of the healthcare provider. Therefore personal cultural values, beliefs, values and behaviour highly influence the healthcare professional practices to address these requirements in a satisfactory manner (Lillis et al. 2010). 

Every healthcare professional is in a state of conflict and sustenance as per their personal calibre and ethical issues in providing healthcare. This essay is the reflection of my personal cultural identity, values, beliefs and behaviours regarding my professional healthcare practice. The reflection will highlight the impact of my personal identity on my functionality as a healthcare practitioner. The reflection will detail about my basic values and their influence on my profession in a constructive as well as contradictory manner.

Reflection on personal cultural identity, values, beliefs and behaviours and their Impact of personal cultural values, beliefs and behaviours on my functionality as a healthcare practitioner

Every individual working as a healthcare professional has their own determined nursing philosophy that is their attitude towards their profession highly influenced by their personality and individuality (Hallam, 2012). My own personal nursing philosophy is “I work to deliver quality care to my patients with complete devotion, determination, honesty, perseverance and hard work in a manner to benefit humanity will all my potential”. In the fulfilment of this nursing philosophy my core cultural identity, values, beliefs and behaviour work to sometimes support or sometimes create a situation of conflict to deliver quality care.

My cultural identity clearly supports my professional where my family is involved in providing healthcare from last 30 years, my mother being a healthcare professional devoted to work for humanity. From my family, I have learned a lot about skills required in the healthcare profession. My mother taught me that patients are not the room numbers or medically complex situation but they are humans that are in need of proper care and attention. I am a female having sympathy, politeness, positivism and patients developed in my attitude that is critically required to deliver quality care. If taken in a positive sense, being a female I am able to understand the pain of others in a better manner. Further, I am my education as a healthcare practitioner is helping me out to get knowledge, intelligence, and healthcare information filled in my personality.

Cultural identity and healthcare practice

My cultural spirituality has taught me the way to deliver service for the benefit of mankind and society. This helps me in understanding the aspects of humanity that are critically required to manage people in healthcare scenario. My cultural spirituality taught me to respect other cultures. Once I encountered a situation where a patient’s belonging to Muslim culture was not ready to take medication containing alcohol, as their religion does not allow doing so. This was a non-emergency condition and in respect to their religion, I found an alternative non-alcohol medication for this patient. In this manner, my spirituality helped me to tackle this situation.

Further, reflecting on my cultural values that involve autonomy, altruism, integrity and caring as four most essentials for developing as a healthcare professional. However, in the certain situation, these personal values also work as the hurdle in my professional practice by creating conflict with ethics of healthcare. Sometimes I need to practice strategies to avoid this conflicting situation to ensure that my personal values only provide the caring legacy to empower my future as a healthcare professional. My cultural value states that every individual has a right to practice autonomy as a form of individuality. As nursing is a self-governing, applied science and autonomous profession, I am positively able to apply this value to my professional practice in delivering patient advocacy, holistic care, good communication, patient education and management. But, being a professional, in some situation I need to follow my senior instruction where sometimes my autonomy creates a conflict. These situations are like gender imbalance, patients abuse, the disruptive and disrespectful behavior of physician, wrong treatment process, caring strategies and collaborative practice. In such situation, my Nursing Practice Act and Massachusetts law help me to understand that nursing profession is to provide optimal health by assisting individual or groups in a collaborative manner (Kirmayer, 2012). I try my best to control the negative situation by gaining support for others in case of patient abuse and use my autonomy to benefit others.

According to Williamson & Harrison (2010), altruism is a beneficial value that is typically concerned with the welfare of others. The professional practice involving altruism always ensures positivity and growth. In the nursing profession, this value works as a source to provide patient concern and advocacy. I have this value already developed in my cultural personality where it helps me to provide a welfare clinical service to my multicultural healthcare environment. Further, Perng & Watson (2012) indicated that integrity allows a truthful approach in nursing practice, which helps to define your own reliability and authenticity. Integrity defines your own truthfulness towards your profession. As one of my cultural values integrity assist me in being honest to my professional standards. It helps me to develop my actions, judgments and character beyond criticism. In a multidisciplinary healthcare environment, this value helps me to protect patient’s right, overcome cultural discrimination and intact the dignity of patients. Lastly, the cultural value of caring for everybody allows me to provide nursing care irrespective of the cast, colour, creed and religion of the sufferer.

Personal values and healthcare practice

Now, considering the impact of my cultural beliefs that help me in this healthcare profession are respect for human dignity, respecting diversity, respecting individualism and human relationship. Kirmayer (2012) indicated that personal beliefs are key to achieve professional goals in healthcare scenario. In a culturally diverse environment, the potential beliefs of respecting diversity and human dignity help to generate a positive workflow. I try my best to practice my cultural belief of respecting the diversity that helps me in practice to respect people belonging to different cultures and provide quality care. Every individual have their own plan and action to practice their cultures and it is completely accepted in society. But, medical science is little painful to understand the concepts of culture. As a professional, I try my best to provide respect and comfort to the cultural beliefs of the patient unless and until it is harnessing my nursing beneficence ethics.

Human dignity is another belief that helps me to consider the patient as a human, not as a diagnosed problem. With my respect for human dignity, I try to address the issues that are non-medical with my skills of communication, sympathy, support and trust. However, I some situation my self-respect being my own human dignity becomes a hurdle in my care process. I can explain a situation when a patient accused me of a mistake that was not done by me that harmed my own human dignity. But, later patient realised their mistake. My patient and respect for their dignity helped me to tackle this situation. Therefore, maintaining once own human dignity is also important to respect other in the multidimensional workplace.

Further, respecting individualism allows developing nursing competency, professional skills, and personal potential in the profession (Dossey et al. 2012). With my belief in individualism, I try my best to concentrate on my own skill and professional development that helps me to promote clinical skills and practice abilities for the benefit of my patients. Healthcare is a multidimensional field where the techniques and practices get regularly updated and modified; therefore, it is essential to practice individualism for protecting and growing once own profession. Further, the belief of respecting human relationship allows me to develop trust, respect and confidence about patient’s confidentiality and privacy. This is one of the most effective non-verbal communication skill in nursing care (Lillis et al. 2010).

Now focussing on my personal behaviours, I generally practice sympathetic care, cooperation, problem-solving approach, quick decision making and developing effective communication. As behaviours are once personal trait they can sometimes harm profession as well. I have faced the certain situation where my positive behaviour has harmed my professional practice. The behaviour of quick decision making made me commit medication error in my professional practice for which I was criticised by my seniors. Sometimes personal communication with patient harmed my professional ethics and legal liabilities. I was accused and punished for such activities but this helped me learn my limitations. These experiences helped me in modifying my behavioural skills as per the requirements of my profession. With the behavioural practice of cooperation, I am able to work in a collaborative manner with professional belonging to diverse cultures. My behaviour of effective communication helps to develop good professional relationships in this multicultural environment. Lastly, the behaviour of sympathetic care allows patient consummation and satisfaction.

Conclusion

In my reflection about my cultural identity, values, beliefs and behaviour influencing my professional practice as healthcare practitioner I discovered aspects that were buried in my conscious. I was able to critically understand the impact of cultural competency on professional practice. I realised that cultural competency and flexibility is a critical requirement in the multicultural work environment. The behaviours, values, beliefs and identity we develop after birth helps in assimilation in the multicultural environment. In a multicultural environment of healthcare, minor values and beliefs shape up the complete professionalism of practitioner that clearly focuses on benefiting others. This reflection clearly indicates my competencies and weaknesses as a culturally assimilated professional in healthcare.

References

Dossey, B. M., Certificate, C. D. I. N. C., Keegan, L., & Co-Director International Nurse Coach Association. (2012). Holistic nursing. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Hallam, J. (2012). Nursing the image: media, culture and professional identity. Routledge.

Lillis, C., LeMone, P., LeBon, M., & Lynn, P. (2010). Study guide for fundamentals of nursing: The art and science of nursing care. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Kirmayer, L. (2012). Rethinking cultural competence. Transcultural Psychiatry, 49(2), 149.

Perng, S. J., & Watson, R. (2012). Construct validation of the Nurse Cultural Competence Scale: a hierarchy of abilities. Journal of clinical nursing, 21(11â€Â12), 1678-1684.

Williamson, M., & Harrison, L. (2010). Providing culturally appropriate care: A literature review. International journal of nursing studies, 47(6), 761-769.