Living in the culture of poverty challenges people when seeking healthcare. Attitudes of staff caring for the poor can affect return to the care system and health outcomes. In the United States, 43.1 million or 15.9% of the population live in poverty. Nurses should be aware of and understand personal attitudes and biases toward poverty to positively effect health outcomes.
Clinical question/project purpose:
The purpose of this project is to assess the attitudes of nurses toward patients from the culture of poverty and provide an educational intervention about poverty to effect positive change in those attitudes. What are the attitudes of registered nurses toward patients from the culture of poverty? How does an educational intervention change those attitudes?
Search of literature/best evidence:
Databases used included CINAHL, Proquest Health and Medical Complete, Social Work Abstracts,
socINDEX, PsychINFO, Medline, and EBSCOhost. Google Scholar provided topic
information. Search terms included attitudes, culture, poverty, culture of poverty, attitudes
toward poverty, stigma, bias, cultural diversity, perceptions, poor, nursing, and cultural nursing
theories. Inclusion criteria for works reviewed included editorials and peer reviewed published
articles and books from the years 1928-2017.
Clinical appraisal of literature/best evidence:
A need exists for further exploration of the attitudes nurses have toward patients from the culture of poverty. When appraising current research, few studies focused on attitudes of nurses toward patients from the culture of poverty. Nursing has a moral and ethical responsibility to ascertain there is no differentiation in care for poor patients. Literature indicates that poverty patients have limited access to quality healthcare compared to the middle and upper classes.
Integration into practice:
Nurses who volunteered in the study participated in a one-hour CEU educational offering about the culture of poverty. Participants learned about the culture of poverty, how to care for patients from the culture of poverty, and became cognizant of their bias.
Evaluation of evidenced-based practice:
A quasi-experimental research design utilized a cross-sectional pre/post survey of registered nurses working at a local rural hospital. Attitudes of the nurses toward poverty were analyzed using the Attitudes Toward Poverty short form developed by Yun and Weaver before and after an educational presentation about the culture of poverty. Demographic data was collected via a set of nominal/ordinal level questions designed by the principal investigator. Descriptive statistics were used for the data analysis.