Module 02 Content
Previously, you selected an article from this list.
Diagnostic Writing Samples Articles
You also submitted a one-sentence summary of the article.
For this assignment, write a summary paragraph about your chosen article. The summary should include:
- An introductory sentence that identifies the title of the article, who wrote it, and the main idea of the article.
- At least 3-5 body sentences that identify supporting details and any questions the article left unanswered.
- A sentence that comments on the effectiveness of the article’s conclusion.
- A concluding sentence that restates the main idea and provides closure for the paragraph.
- An APA style citation for the article. For more information on APA, click on the Resources tab in this course.
- Use of appropriate, standard grammar and mechanics, as well as careful proofing. The final product should be relatively error-free.
Diagnostic Writing Samples
Business
Gresty, H. (2019). More than a feeling: The rise of EQ. Director, 72(6), 41-44.
https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=keh&AN=138130136&site=eds-live&custid=s9076023
ECE
Orlando, A. (2020). Growing up wired. Discover, 41(3), 42-47.
https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=a9h&AN=142241565&site=ehost-live&scope=site&custid=s9076023
General Interest
Lim, X. (2020). Out of our mines. Discover, 41(4), 30-37.
https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=a9h&AN=142788990&site=ehost-live&scope=site&custid=s9076023
Human Services
Russo, A. (2019). Partnering for family success: Family resource centers and family support and strengthening networks. Policy & Practice, 77(6), 8-11.
https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=keh&AN=140756764&site=ehost-live&scope=site&custid=s9076023
Justice Studies
Dauber-Griffin, A. (2020). Gender equity: Why it is important for corrections. American Jails, 33(6), 15-20.
https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=i3h&AN=141249214&site=ehost-live&scope=site&custid=s9076023
Nursing/Health Sciences
Younas, A. (2020). Self-awareness: A tool for providing culturally competent care. Nursing, 50(2), 61-63.
https:/doi.org/10.1097/01.NURSE.0000651628.71776.b3
Note
:
Double-click the Adobe Acrobat icon to open the PDF file.
Technology
Snyder, K., Paulson, P., & Bergen, S. (2020). A website assessment tool for patient engagement: A verification. International Journal of Healthcare Management, 13(1), 58-64. https://doi.org/10.1080/20479700.2019.1616385
https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=bth&AN=142399873&site=eds-live&custid=s9076023
Adobe Acrobat
Document
www.Nursing2020.com February l Nursing2020 l 61
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BY AHTISHAM YOUNAS, BSN, MN, RN
Self-awareness:
A tool for providing culturally competent care
CULTURAL COMPETENCE is es-
sential for establishing rapport with
patients and for assessing patients’
needs, including those arising from
their cultural and social values and
beliefs. This article discusses how
self-awareness can help nurses pro-
vide culturally competent care to
patients and their families.
Culturally competent
care and its importance
Cultural competence can be defined
as “the gradually developed capac-
ity of nurses to provide safe and
quality healthcare to clients with
different cultural backgrounds.”1
The most significant aspects of cul-
turally competent care are accepting
and respecting racial, cultural, and
religious differences and promoting
social justice in healthcare settings.2
At a broader sociocultural level, cul-
tural competence can enhance cross-
cultural communication, decrease
health inequalities and promote
equality, improve access to health-
care services, and increase health
literacy.3
A comprehensive nursing assess-
ment that includes awareness of
patients’ cultural and social values
Abstract: Cultural competence is essential for establishing rapport with patients and for
assessing patients’ needs. This article discusses how self-awareness can help nurses provide
culturally competent care to patients and their families.
Keywords: cultural competence, reflective thinking, self-awareness, transcultural nursing
Copyright © 2020 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.
62 l Nursing2020 l Volume 50, Number 2 www.Nursing2020.com
helps the nurse develop and imple-
ment nursing interventions that are
most relevant to the patient’s needs.10
By improving communication with
patients, culturally competent nurs-
ing care increases patient satisfaction
and encourages patients to partici-
pate in and adhere to the treatment
regimen.4
Working effectively and efficiently
in today’s complex healthcare en-
vironment requires nurses to be
aware of different intrapersonal,
interpersonal, and contextual factors
that influence their interactions with
patients.5 Intrapersonal factors relate
to the nurse personally; interpersonal
factors are those that can affect the
nurse’s interactions with patients,
their families, and other healthcare
professionals. For example, if a nurse
has a stressful day at work and is also
caring for some challenging patients
(intrapersonal factor), the nurse’s in-
teractions and relationships with oth-
er patients (interpersonal factor) may
be negatively affected. Similarly, if a
nurse is caring for a critically ill pa-
tient, both the patient and the family
require emotional support. But if the
nurse’s workload prevents the nurse
from being fully present to the family,
overall patient care may be affected.
Contextual factors are those hid-
den social, cultural, political, and
economic factors that influence the
nurse’s relationship with patients.5
For example, a patient may refuse
a surgical procedure for financial or
familial reasons. If the nurse is not
aware of the patient’s reasons, the
nurse might consider the patient
“nonadherent” or resistant to the
treatment plan.6
Among these described factors,
intrapersonal factors such as patients’
and nurses’ cultural and social values
can significantly affect the devel-
opment of effective nurse-patient
relationships, ultimately affecting
the quality of overall nursing care.6,7
Many nations, including the US,
United Kingdom, and Canada, have
multicultural populations in which
nurses from various cultures care
for patients who are also culturally
diverse. Because culture is an intrin-
sic part of who a person is, cultural
competence is essential for delivering
quality nursing care.8-10 However, it
has also been argued that to promote
culturally competent care, a greater
emphasis has been placed on devel-
oping a culturally diverse workforce
than on modulating the individual
nurse’s behaviors, awareness, and
characteristics.3 Developing self-
awareness, the focus of this article,
can help individual nurses provide
more culturally competent care to
patients and their families regardless
of their own cultural background.
What is self-awareness?
Self-awareness is an intrapersonal
and introspective process one can
use to explore and recognize personal,
familial, and professional nursing
values, social and cultural beliefs,
and life experiences in different
nursing situations.7 Self-aware
nurses reflect on their strengths and
limitations; acknowledge their racial,
cultural, and religious prejudices;
and recognize negative and positive
potentials to care for patients in dif-
ferent contexts and settings.7,11
Besides cultivating an understand-
ing of one’s own personal strengths,
limitations, emotions, and feelings,
nurses who are self-aware recognize
environmental factors and condi-
tions that can influence their ability
to provide effective care, such as time
constraints or a heavy workload.11 In
short, self-awareness is foundational
for developing and fostering cross-
cultural therapeutic relationships.12
Points for reflection
To learn more about your patients’
cultural values and beliefs and com-
pare them with your own beliefs,
incorporate the following consider-
ations into your nursing practice.
• What are my patient’s cultural be-
liefs and values?
• How are my own cultural beliefs
and values different from those of my
patient?
• What are my patient’s fears, hopes,
expectations, and beliefs about
healthcare treatments and proce-
dures?
• How do my patient’s views and
beliefs contradict or concur with my
own cultural beliefs?
• Are any recommended healthcare
treatments or nursing interventions
likely to be culturally unacceptable
to my patient?
Nurses can seek answers to these
questions through patient and family
interviews and personal observations
at the time of patient admission and
update the information as they learn
more about their patients and fami-
lies. Using this awareness, nurses can
explore ways to provide better nurs-
ing care while respecting patients’
Nurses who are self-
aware recognize
environmental factors
and conditions that can
influence their ability to
provide effective care.
Copyright © 2020 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.
www.Nursing2020.com February l Nursing2020 l 63
cultural values and differences.
Reflecting on previous encounters
requiring cultural competence and
learning from those experiences can
significantly enhance a nurse’s ability
to care for other patients with similar
cultural values.
A recent systematic review of six
experimental studies that focused on
educational interventions to enhance
cultural competence reported that self-
awareness and reflection are necessary
for developing cultural competence in
nurses.13 This review reported that the
most useful educational interventions
were those that encouraged nurses to
explore their own culture and cultural
values, professional background,
biases, and prejudices.
Reflecting on personal biases
A nurse’s personal religious and cul-
tural beliefs can affect the ability to
care for patients in a culturally compe-
tent manner. For example, if a nurse
does not believe in the effectiveness
of prayer as a healing method, this
personal belief may prevent the nurse
from cooperating with a patient’s
request for clergy or a nontraditional
healer, leading to a failure to fulfill the
patient’s needs. When you are aware
of your own biases and ingrained cul-
tural values, you can prevent yourself
from projecting those biases on to pa-
tients when providing care.7
Other examples of patients and
situations that require cultural sen-
sitivity and self-awareness include a
patient who refuses a blood transfu-
sion due to religious beliefs, a male
Muslim patient who is not comfort-
able receiving physical care from
female nurses, and a patient who
may not speak English and requires
the services of an interpreter. In line
with these examples, a recent study
reported that nurses indicated that
when they are more aware of their
own beliefs and assumptions about
folk remedies and stereotypical views
of ethnic groups, their ability to
provide culturally competent care is
enhanced.14 Acknowledging personal
biases and judgments can help nurs-
es genuinely view a nursing situation
from the patients’ perspective.
Applying CULTURE to practice
Self-awareness reminds nurses not to
make judgments about their patients’
cultural values. The author offers the
CULTURE acronym to delineate how
self-awareness can be used as a tool
to enhance cultural competence and
provide more sensitive care.
• Challenge your own and others’
biases and prejudices that may nega-
tively affect your caring abilities.
• Uncover how your cultural val-
ues and sociocultural and historical
beliefs may affect your interactions
with patients, their families, and
other healthcare professionals.
• Listen to the viewpoints of patients
and others and learn about other
cultures and religions.
• Tune in to diversity in nursing
situations and situate yourself among
diverse cultural groups.
• Use your experiences caring for
culturally diverse patients to discern
more meaningful ways of caring for
patients in other similar nursing situ-
ations.
• Respect your own and others’ cul-
tural values.
• Evaluate how your awareness of
your own and your patients’ cultural
beliefs allows you to provide cultur-
ally competent care and how you can
use this knowledge in the future.
Various strategies can help nurses
apply the CULTURE acronym in ev-
eryday nursing situations. Elements
of reflective practice include keenly
observing every nursing practice
situation and noticing patient-care
needs; keeping a diary; developing
portfolios; and seeking feedback from
patients, their families, and your col-
leagues.7 For example, nurses can use
a diary to recount and reflect upon
interesting experiences with patients
from various cultural and religious
backgrounds, identifying positive and
negative aspects of these interactions.
Based on what they learn from these
experiences, they may find ways to
modify future actions and interven-
tions. Reflective accounts can also be
placed in a portfolio.
Self-awareness is integral to cultur-
ally competent nursing care. Nurses
who recognize their cultural biases are
better prepared to manage them. ■
REFERENCES
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Int J Nurs Sci. 2016;3(3):268-273.
2. French BM. Culturally competent care: the
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252-255.
3. Campinha-Bacote J. Cultural competemility: a
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2019;24(1):1.
4. Tang C, Tian B, Zhang X, et al. The influence
of cultural competence of nurses on patient
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5. Doane GH, Varcoe C. How to Nurse: Relational
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10. Murphy K. The importance of cultural
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11. Eckroth-Bucher M. Self-awareness: a review
and analysis of a basic nursing concept. ANS Adv
Nurs Sci. 2010;33(4):297-309.
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cultural social work. Fam Soc. 2005;86(2):181-188.
13. Oikarainen A, Mikkonen K, Kenny A, et al.
Educational interventions designed to develop
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Int J Nurs Stud. 2019;98:75-86.
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experiences of cultural competence among clinical
nurses in Taiwan. Appl Nurs Res. 2019;45:6-11.
Ahtisham Younas is a doctoral student at the Faculty
of Nursing, Memorial University of Newfoundland in
St. John’s, Canada.
The author has disclosed no financial relationships
related to this article.
DOI-10.1097/01.NURSE.0000651628.71776.b3
Copyright © 2020 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.
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