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     The driving forces that make a nurse provide culturally competent care includes knowledge of different cultures, an open attitude towards learning new cultures, and skills to support patients. Being aware of different cultures allows for the nurse to communicate better with their patient. For example, a patient goes to dialysis three times per week for their chronic kidney disease. The patient of Mexican-American heritage and on January 6^th is the three wise man day where gifts are exchanged and families get together to celebrate the holiday. This is not a holiday recognized by the United States. Changing the patients date for dialysis would be beneficial and would increase the patient’s quality of life. If their scheduled date for dialysis is not changed a nurse who is culturally competent would encourage celebrations at the dialysis center based on the patient’s Mexican-American heritage and Roman catholic tradition are two important driving forces for the patient (Eggenberger, 2006).

            To be a culturally competent nurse requires knowledge of the culture but also think about how the culture affects human behavior. A common problem with patient and nursing is encouraging patient start a new diet because of new diagnosis of diabetes. However, in Mexican-American cultures a couple of important food groups include rice, beans, and corn, which are all high in carbohydrates.  Understanding a person’s culture helps to better serve our patient by teaching the newly diagnosis diabetes patient to decrease their rice intake and substitute the rice with something else (Eggenberger, 2006).

            I work as a travel nurse during this past winter I was on assignment in Arizona. In this region Arizona I was working there is a large Mexican population from the Sonora region of Mexico. In this region of Mexico many of the patient’s do not speak English or have a younger family member translate for them or use the hospital approved translation system for reviewing discharge paperwork, signing consent, etc. During the COVID-19 pandemic this made more difficult because I only speak a little Spanish and family members were not allow in the hospital to help communicate regarding where the bathroom is located and simple everyday tasks required the use of the hospital translation system. Most patients where understanding when we I would try to speak Spanish use hand gestures to explain simple things. In addition, patient often tried to speak English to me I was always touched that they were making an effort to communicate with me in English.

Reference

Eggenberger, S., Grassley, J., & Restrepo, E. (2006). Culturally Competent Nursing Care for Families by Listening to the Voices of Mexican-American Women. Online