How does the boundary affect your practice or have the potential to affect your practice? Provide examples.

The identified social boundary I chose to discuss is the cultural barrier. As a nurse practitioner, I have had the experience of working with diverse cultures and ethnicities throughout my practice. Before working with active-duty military and veterans, I worked in a primary Columbian clinic. At this clinic, I faced culturally sensitive communication barriers when discussing healthcare information with patients. Soon after, we received certified blue interpreter phones. This helped ensure information was appropriately translated to the patients to ensure they had a thorough understanding of healthcare information. Working with active-duty military can be challenging as well. I have experienced language and healthcare literacy barriers with spouses and active-duty military members from Africa, Asia, India, as well as from the Middle East. Being culturally competent helps when providing care and education to individuals of different cultures because this helps to have a clear understanding of their relationship with healthcare. (Brooks, 2019)

As a leader, how can you have an impact on overcoming that boundary? Provide examples.

As a leader, having annual training on becoming well-rounded and improving cultural competence will help familiarize employees with providing care for individuals. Encouraging employees to be open-minded, respectful, and utilize all available resources when communicating with individuals of different cultures ensures the best standard and ethical care is being practiced. This will also help to improve patient care by increasing the knowledge and understanding of different cultures to improve the safety, health, and welfare of patients and their families.

What interprofessional relationships can you foster that can contribute to overcoming the boundary? Be specific and provide rationale.

Interprofessional relationships in which individuals can overcome barriers include collaborating with social workers, interpreters, linguists, nurse educators, and case managers to ensure cultural competence goals are being met. Having resources and ensuring employees are adequately educated to provide holistic care will ensure that dignity and respect of others backgrounds, religion, beliefs, and values are being taken into consideration when providing care for patients. (Lekas, 2020)

How will you leverage resources to overcome the selected boundary?

To leverage resources to overcome cultural barriers, I will ensure employees receive cultural humility vs. cultural competence training. Cultural humility consists of a lifelong commitment of self-assessments to ensure cultural competence is met. Encouraging employees to learn the basic information of different cultural backgrounds and healthcare practices will increase cultural awareness. With these methods in place, cultural awareness should be increased. (Kaihlanen et al., 2019)

References

Brooks, L.A., Manias, E., & Bloomer, M.J. (2019). Culturally sensitive communication in healthcare: A concept analysis. Collegian, 26(3), 383-391. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.colegn.2018.09.007 (Links to an external site.)

Kaihlanen, A.M., Hietapakka, L., & Heponiemi, T. (2019). Increasing cultural awareness: Qualitative study of nurses’ perceptions about cultural competence training. BMC Nursing, 18(1), 1-9.

Lekas, H-M., Pahl, K., & Fuller Lewis, C. (2020). Rethinking cultural competence: Shifting to cultural humility. Health Services Insights, 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1177/117863292097080