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Providing Nursing Care in a Global Community Setting

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Jody M. Seabright, MSN, RN
Nursing, Wheeling Jesuit University, Wheeling, WV

Learning Objective 1: describe their own cultural beliefs and develop an awareness of cultural sensitivity issues of individuals and other communities throughout the world.

Learning Objective 2: implement culturally sensitive nursing care within the context of the global communities

Purpose: The increased interest of healthcare providers to care for individuals and communities throughout the world creates the need for increased awareness of issues related to cultural diversity and cultural sensitivity. Faculty members from a wide variety of educational settings are conducting global healthcare service/learning experiences for their students to prepare them to be global leaders in healthcare. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of cultural diversity/sensitivity and develop an understanding of the necessary strategies to implement to enable the delivery of optimal global healthcare.

Methods: A reflective cultural sensitivity exercise will be completed as a pre-test by the nursing students prior to engaging in the experience of providing nursing care to individuals from different cultural backgrounds.  This will be followed by an instructional presentation and the students will be asked to reflect on any of their responses in the pre-test that resulted in high rather than low scores on the topics of understanding other cultures and interacting effectively with individuals from diverse cultures.  At the conclusion of the reflective and instructional exercises, the students will complete a reflective post-test.  The pre-test and post-test will be compared and analyzed statistically. Once the faculty led global healthcare experience is completed the students will be given an additional post-test and the results will be compared and analyzed statistically to the pre-test and post-test experience results.

Results: The results of the pre-test and subsequent post-test analyses will provide evidence to continue the instructional exercises, or serve as an impetus to provide additional instruction to enhance the awareness of cultural sensitivity and cultural diversity in global healthcare.

Conclusion: This approach may serve as a model for future practice in addressing the cultural diversity needs around the world.

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