Los Angeles is a city where many patients come from diverse cultural backgrounds. It is especially important in Los Angeles, and surrounding areas like Ventura, Orange County, San Bernardino, etc. to have culturally competent care. This is an essential part when giving compassionate hospice care in general. Beta Hospice Care’s commitment to cultural competence is one of our focuses.
It starts with acknowledging the importance of various cultural aspects. We focus on providing a hospice service that caters to the needs and traditions of patients. Research shows that cultural competence impacts patients’ outcomes and improves the healthcare experience not only for patients but for their loved ones.
Understanding Cultural Competence
Cultural competence in the nursing field is the ability to understand, respect and respond to the cultural diversity that contributes to patients’ health and quality of life. Cultural competence equips the nurse with the awareness, knowledge, and skillset to deliver compassionate health care that is important to the patient. By embracing this aspect of professionalism, all patients can receive care in an equitable and effective manner, regardless of their ethnic or cultural background.
The Diversity of Los Angeles
Los Angeles is a city with an immense diversity. Los Angeles and Orange County’s population includes the largest Chinese and Filipino populations outside Asia, the largest Armenian population outside of Armenia, the largest Iranian population outside of Iran, and so on. Add to that an existing strong presence of immigrants of all Latin American nationalities. And that’s just to name a few. The fact that Los Angeles is so rich in culture comes with certain responsibility for its healthcare system. A patient’s ethnicity, language, religion, and socioeconomic background can influence their needs during treatment. Cultural competence shouldn’t be just another nice skill by the nurses and other palliative and hospice care providers in Los Angeles – it is absolutely necessary.
Key Components of Culturally Competent Nursing Care
Cultural awareness: Nurses must continually pay attention to their own cultural biases and how they may impact on their interactions with patients. This is the first of six ‘steps’ to cultural competence.
Cultural knowledge: an understanding of the cultural contexts of the patients you serve, encompassing knowledge about health beliefs, practices and customs that can impact the service you provide. Health beliefs and practices are often shaped by cultural norms, so understanding the eating and dietary habits, health rituals, and utilization of alternative medicines for people in each cultural context can help in providing better palliative care in Orange County.
Cultural Skills: Learning how to speak in a culturally sensitive way – that is, providing appropriate communication strategies that respect the culture of a patient, whether is learning critical phrases in the patient’s native language, or understanding the restraint and formality of non-verbal communication, is very important. This can strengthen the bond between patient and caregiver, which results in a positive impact in every aspect.
Cultural Encounters: Nurses who have experience interacting with people from many cultural backgrounds are more effective when providing culturally sensitive care. There are many opportunities to practice and improve our cultural competence.
Cultural Desire: the desire to seek to learn about and know people different from oneself and to care about respecting their culture (a commitment to the quest for cultural competence).Cultural desire encourages a never-ending quest to learn and adapt.
Benefits of Culturally-Competent Care
Patients will respond more favorably to culturally competent care; they’ll feel respected and understood, which would increase their trust and communication with the healthcare provider. That trust is crucial in hospice care since most of the conversations relate to end-of-life preferences and needs. Other benefits of culturally competent care include patient treatment adherence, enhanced patient satisfaction, and better health outcomes.
Implementing Cultural Competence at Beta Hospice Care
A culturally-competent care model used at Beta Hospice Care includes the use of several practices: At Beta Hospice Care, we provide culturally-competent care.
Patient-Centred Care Plans: At our facility we respect the unique cultural belief and practices of patients and their families in our care decisions. Our gentle practices involve also involving the patients and their families in our decision-making process.
Community Engagement: We engage with our communities in Los Angeles to better understand their needs and foster more productive relationships with them. This helps us to better understand and anticipate emerging cultural tastes and challenges.
Conclusion
Cultural competence is the key to providing patient-centered, humane, and equality consciousness-es health services of superior quality. Given the fact that the population of Los Angeles grew and became more diverse throughout the years, insisting on the cultural competency in nursing will become more essential. Beta Hospice Care believes in this rule offering culturally sensitive, respectful, and compassionate healthcare to each patient. Our goal consists in continuing and growth development of cultural competence in nursing in order for the healthcare system to be patient-centered and harmony-driven.