The role of the advanced practice nurse in nurse-patient cultural gap.

Do you believe that the advanced practice nurse can bridge the nurse-patient cultural gap?

Post should be a minimum of 350 words, scholarly written, APA formatted, and referenced.  A minimum of 4 references are required (other than your text). 

Introduction

The growing diversity in the United States has played a major role in movement to cultural competency in healthcare.  As of 2016, there were nearly 44 million immigrants living in the US which is four times what it was in 1965. Our ever changing ethnic population brings many challenges for healthcare workers to provide care in this multicultural, multiethnic, and economically diverse population.

Global health is focused on human health issues that transcend borders. In an attempt to improve health and achieve equality in health care worldwide an emphasis on transnational health issues involve research and practice as well as interdisciplinary collaboration to attain solutions.  Increasingly we are living in a globalized world where health problems can ravage groups and create worldwide political instability. Due to this, the UN conducted a summit to discuss the growing global concern of chronic diseases or Non-communicable diseases. Please refer to the following link to review the summary report of this discussion:

UN High Level Meeting on NCDs. Retrieved from:
http://www.who.int/nmh/events/moscow_ncds_2011/round_tables_summary.pdf

The Role of the Advanced Practice Nurse

The National League for Nursing has identified the role of nursing in global diversity as a critical priority and the advanced practice nurse will be providing care to a very diverse global population of patients. Bridging this cultural gap is a major challenge of the APN.  Dayer-Berenson (2014) suggests that in order to achieve this we should follow the mnemonic of ASKED which is awareness, skill, knowledge, encounters, and desire.

We need to perform a self-assessment to become aware of personal biases and prejudices toward other culture groups. Cultural skill is the ability to conduct a cultural assessment to collect relevant cultural data concerning the client’s presenting problem as well as conducting a culturally sensitive physical examination. As advanced practice nurses we must obtain a sound educational base about culturally diverse groups. By engaging in cultural interactions or encounters with clients from culturally diverse backgrounds help modify existing beliefs and prevents stereotyping.  And finally the cultural desire is the motivation to want to engage in the process of becoming culturally aware, culturally knowledgeable, and culturally skillful and to seek cultural encounters.

APNs are in key positions to improve healthcare for patients from various cultures by overcoming barriers and reducing disparities. By practicing evidence based care to treat diseases as well as providing much needed research of ethnic and racial minorities the APN has the ability to increase the quality of healthcare delivery for this population.