The person I recently cared for was a middle-aged Asian American male. Because the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) prohibits the disclosure of information regarding patients’ physical or mental health, I cannot share the man’s situation or diagnosis (Office for Civil Rights, 2022). Nonetheless, the person’s view of the cause of his condition centered around his family’s history of having a certain disease, and his health literacy comprised his relatives’ experiences and findings from the Internet. The man knew the common symptoms of his illness, understood the consequences of not responding to them, and was moderately open to the proposed treatment. The man’s identity on the continuum of privilege-disadvantage inclines more toward being privileged because he is a male heterosexual adult who speaks English and has satisfactory levels of education and income (Lor et al., 2016). His primary disadvantages on the continuum are being partially from an underrepresented Asian group, having a historical trauma, and following a non-Western religion (Lor et al., 2016). Accordingly, my approach to caring for him in a culturally competent way was being respectful and mindful of his family’s disease and spiritual beliefs.
Furthermore, one’s health and decision-making can be affected by various cultural influences. For instance, the patient described above belongs to a sub-group that can be named multicultural, and its image represents that the man comes from a family with both Asian and American traditions (“Multicultural families,” n.d.). The sub-group can be characterized by Purnell’s Model with its 12 cultural constructs. For example, with the identified patient, I could consider his religious practices under the spirituality domain and drug metabolism under the biocultural ecology section (Purnell, 2018). Notably, sub-group presence for those with multicultural backgrounds is relatively high in my area of practice. Primary issues related to local and global communities regarding multicultural individuals are that society sometimes seems not to regard the differences and uniqueness of those from diverse cultures and undermines the experiences of minorities. Consequently, some recommendations for providing culturally competent nursing care to the multicultural sub-group are not making rushed decisions, being unbiased, and listening carefully to patients and their loved ones.
References
Lor, M., Crooks, N., & Tluczek, A. (2016). A proposed model of person-, family-, and culture-centered nursing care.Nursing Outlook, 64(4), 352-366. Web.
Multicultural families: Falling in love in a globalized world. (n.d.). Stillman. Web.
Office for Civil Rights. (2022). Guidance regarding methods for de-identification of protected health information in accordance with the health insurance portability and accountability act (HIPAA) privacy rule. HHS. Web.
Purnell, L. (2018). Update: The Purnell theory and model for culturally competent health care.Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 30(2), 98-105. Web.