Abstract
People understand culture differently depending on their perceptions towards its effects in different sectors of life. People’s understanding varies due to the differences in their cognitive functionality and the ability to master and retain concepts learned within a specified period. The main goal of the nursing practice is to offer quality and immediate services to patients coupled with significantly influencing the establishment of a healthy society. This paper aims at establishing the influence of the Colombian American culture on the issue and concepts that are involved in the healthcare setting and from the collaborative practices that the medical professionals are involved in during their practice. A background will be established where all relevant information regarding the Columbian American culture and its influence on health setting will be discussed. An analysis of the Colombian American culture will be carried out coupled with describing an implementation plan with respect to the Campinha-Bacote cultural competence model. An evaluation tool will be created before drawing an evidence-based conclusion regarding the issue of the impact of the Colombian American culture on the health setting of the state.
American Columbian Culture
This paper aims at establishing the influence of the Colombian American culture on the issue and concepts involved in healthcare settings and the collaborative practice that medical professionals are involved in during their practice. Some issues arise in the practice and operations in the medical settings, which require the application of personal problem-solving techniques and the cultural attributes that every society values and takes into consideration not only in medical setups, but also in other areas. This move is in collaboration with the contributions of other parties in the medical setting, but from different cultures working towards the attainment of the common goals and objectives in the establishment of a healthy environment and community. This project aims at improving the understanding of cultural effects on clinical nursing and the issues that affect medical professionals in practice. Therefore, this aspect underscores the need to have an individual reflection on the experiences and lessons that are derived from collaborative practice. At the end of the paper, a firm argument will be drawn on the concept of the effects of the Colombian American culture towards the medical or health practice, bearing in mind that medical professionals work within different environments and with disparate cultural or nationality groups.
Background Information
The Columbian Americans are from the northwest side of South America, which borders the north of the Caribbean Sea and southeast of Brazil. The region has different cultural groups due to the high rate of immigration some decades ago. The aspect of having multiculturalism in the region greatly influences health settings in the state in different ways. The success of any medical professional in the Columbian American health sector is determined by not only the individual commitment and dedication towards specific areas of specialization, but also by the ability to collaborate with other stakeholders including students, educators, and professionals among others. One might be having good mastery of medical concepts, but failure to recognize that other individuals in similar fields have unique methods of understanding the same concepts leads to the attainment of undesired results in research. The understanding of one individual varies from that of another party due to the differences in their cognitive functionality and the ability to master and retain concepts learned within a specified period. However, the integration of a teamwork study is perhaps the best technique for attaining competence and proficiency in the medical field as practitioners are in a position to share ideas and suggest solutions to some challenges that hinder the effective delivery of quality medical services and products to patients. The goal of the nursing practice is to offer quality and immediate services to patients and significantly influencing the establishment of a healthy society. Therefore, cultural differences should be considered as hindering factors towards attainment of the goal.
Studies have revealed that both health professionals and clients are directly affected by their cultures, and thus the Columbian American culture influences the health setting greatly. Collaborative practice is essential in the nursing sector where patients or medical practitioners are from different cultures and other medical segments in the health and safety sector. This assertion holds because such practice encourages the exchange of basic knowledge and skills among the medical practitioners (Stanley, 2012). The aspect of working as a team for health practitioners and patients towards the attainment of mutual goals and objectives is beneficial to doctors, nurses, and patients. The understanding that the Columbian American culture influences the perceptions of patients towards illness, pain, and death is sufficient to show the need of working together towards the establishment of better understanding towards the issues. This assertion holds because their lives are saved and improved as opposed to when a doctor or nurse works alone for people from different cultures.
The Columbian American culture has greatly affected the confidence of both patients and doctors in the issue of death and pain. In one way, it is evident that confidence is established in the patients because the doubts about the competence and experience of the practitioners are reduced and managed when doctors or nurses work as a group. Therefore, the Columbian American culture plays out due to the contextual factors, personal issues, and the group behaviors, which pressure the effectiveness of collaborative practice, effectiveness, and efficiency if not attained by the end of a practice. However, it is essential for the medical practitioners and professionals to ensure that all barriers that hinder effectiveness and efficacy in the health setting are addressed through encouraging dialogue with other members and strategizing on effective communication (Curtis, de Vries, & Sheerin, 2013).
Various issues about the Columbian American culture and its influence to the health setting come up when medical professionals undertake training and practice in a healthcare setting. The major focus of training and internment for the medical professionals is to understand the influence or effect of cultural norms and values of different communities or societies to the medical setting. Culture is a major issue that medical practitioners need to consider when addressing clients because some cultures value their beliefs over the medical advices and procedures that they are offered. The demonstration of a collaborative practice among the medical practitioners and the establishment of the challenges that are involved in practice development in relation to the nursing practice change, leadership, and culture are essential for the attainment of competence and proficiency in the medical practice. Some of these issues are linked to the roles and responsibilities that professionals in the medical setting are obliged to perform with the focus on attaining the mutual goals of the group. With respect to the effects of culture in the medical setting, these responsibilities include the communication modalities that are supposed to be applied in situations where more than two individuals from different cultures are working towards achieving a common mission. In addition, the problem-solving techniques that need to be integrated in the management of challenges connected to the health of patients who are from different cultures from the professionals are essential (Stanley, 2012).
Analysis of Culture
The first Colombian community in the US was established after the WW1, and this created multiculturalism due to the arrival of various professionals such as nurses, accountants, and pharmacists. Students also contributed to the formation of various cultures in Colombia due to the high-quality education that was offered in the US. Understanding the challenges that affect patients requires not only professionalism, but also an understanding between the client and the medical officers. Culture is a pattern of traditions, ideas, and customs of a given society, which are shared among the people in society. The Colombian-American culture has been evolving constantly and medics have the responsibility to learn and understand the cultural practices of the clients that they attend. The rate at which the Colombian American cultural evolution is occurring varies depending on the communities. It increases when a group moves to a new region and forced to adapt to the new cultural norms, which are different from their own cultures. Children are the most affected individuals in changing cultures as they try to adapt to new changes in different unfamiliar environments. Understanding the needs of such children becomes difficult to the medical professionals, as it requires the attention of parents or guardians to help in the interpretation of the challenges facing a child. In a bid to understand the effects of culture in the healthcare setting, it is essential for the medical professionals to know whether the cultures are primarily collectivist or individualist. This aspect enables one to know whether to deal with individual patient as one problem or as a group problem.
A successful team in any medical setting is determined by the nature of its members. According to the knowledge that medical professionals attain regarding cultural issues, team development is principally meant to examine how team members can address the challenges that face the group and the techniques employed in meeting the agreed objectives, especially in cases where different cultural groups are involved (Owens & Patton, 2013). The fact that by the end of the diagnosis and treatment process most medical teams achieve the targeted objectives shows that the methods that they use as a group are effective and efficient in meeting the core goal of the healthcare setting. Such situation is possible due to the integration of the Tuckman’s group development theory and its applicability to the group practice in the nursing sector. For any group to be successful irrespective of the field to which it is conducting a medical practice, it must integrate the five stages of a group development, which include norming, forming, adjourning, and performing (MacPhee, Skelton-Green, Bouthillette & Suryaprakash, 2012). The stages are unique as they foster easy measures of distinguishing between the interpersonal stages of group development where different cultures are involved and the mission behavior demonstrated by the medical team towards helping patients of different cultures to attain or restore their health, especially in the Colombian respect.
In the forming stage, one needs to be familiar with the positions and roles that s/he is given in relation to others and understand the culture of the people that they are addressing. In this stage, practitioners and professionals in the medical sector immensely contribute to the setting of the objectives of the team because they are initially considered unclear, and thus they help each other in selection and in the establishment of good criteria that guide them in the process of diagnosing and treating patients. After all the parties, viz. the patients and the medics, are aware of the individual character of other participants, they have a common agreement on how to help clients from different cultural background. The participants who emerge the best in anger management and conflict resolution are usually considered the best in handling cases that involve different cultural conflicts are selected as leaders in the sector. The aspect does not mean that the other professionals are unable to address the challenges, but they are partially facing challenges in addressing the groups or individuals from different cultures. This aspect implies that leadership and professionalism are vocational undertakings irrespective of the nature of the group or field.
Other stages of medical group establishment for the medical professionals dealing with different cultures concentrate on the determination of appropriate behaviors that are significant in ensuring the effectiveness and competency are achieved by the end of the project (McGuire & Kennerly, 2014). For instance, the commitment and dedication of individual participants, correctional approaches that they accommodate, problem-solving techniques that all participants recognize, and the innovations that can aid in the attainment of the goals and objectives of the group (MacPhee et al., 2012).
From the collaborative practice in understanding the influence of the Columbian American cultures, family members, patients, and medical practitioners need to evaluate their problem-solving skills and experiences, which is possible via considering the constructive attempts of successful task completion. Individuals who can address the pertinent cultural issues help other members to have full control of the responsibilities and duties given to them.
Upon the completion of the diagnosis and treatment processes and the attainment of the medical goals and objectives, participants are informed that they have the freedom to adjourn because they have attained their expectations (Jackson, Clements, Averill & Zimbro, 2012). The medics’ duties are incomplete until they accomplish the mission of the practice that triggered the formation of a group, viz. addressing issues linked to the cultures in the medical setups. Generally, professionals in the medical or healthcare setting appreciate that individual cultural understanding is crucial in a group of professionals with common knowledge, skills, and experience. Professionals in the field encourage one another to have a positive attitude towards the patients from different cultures irrespective of whether they are individualist or collectivists. Through such efforts, they are in a position to offer dedication and commitment to their practices, which are two parameters that are fundamental to collaborative practice in the healthy sector and nursing practice where culture is considered as a limiting factor towards the attainment of medical goals.
Analysis of the Culture Using a Culturally Competent Model
The process of cultural competence is considered as a culturally conscious model of care that offers definitions to cultural competence. According to the model, medical professionals need to be culturally competent and the model defines being competent in the health setting as the ability to integrate various issues in creating cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, and cultural encounters. Considering a population of elderly individuals who have a native language that is not international, there are various notable challenges that face the medical practitioners who serve them due to their overreliance on cultural norms. By using the Campinha-Bacote Nursing Model as the cultural assessment model, it can be argued that Colombian American cultures have defined cultural norms or beliefs that must be followed for most institutions to run successfully. Taking an example of the mentally ill patients and the physically challenged patients, some believe that they have cannot be resolved irrespective of how much trained medical professionals from other cultures try. Therefore, this aspect forces the medics to get someone who can translate and convince them on the importance of following the ideas and prescriptions offered by the trained individuals in the medical field.
When working with people that one has never met before, it becomes a big challenge especially when there are issues that some members are not in a position to agree on and settle on a common ground. When one is working with a group of participants/patients that have never met each other, it is essential to delegate roles depending on one’s individual aspects and specific individual skills in a team condition. Each participant’s inputs are treated uniquely and independently initially because the reliability of the contributions cannot be measured until when other members investigate the ideas suggested by one member in a bid to derive comprehensive conclusion (Branson, 2012). For a team to come up with evidence-based conclusions in a collaborative practice, it is important for the members to analyze various roles that everyone plays in the practice. This goal is attained by appreciating that sometimes they come from different cultures. These roles entail the inclusion of investigating the performance of specialists, executers, resource investigators, coordinators, supervisors, and the practice compilers. In addition, individuals need to help each other to appreciate that personal contribution towards a collaborative project or practice should be treated uniquely and independently for effectiveness and efficiency to be achieved (Holt, Bjorklund & Green, 2012). This goal is achieved by requesting the participants to offer general feedbacks towards the practices involving individuals from different cultures from the initial stages to the completion phases, with respect to what they achieved from the collaborative practice.
Implementation
In a bid to be in a position to implement the fundamental aspects of cultural competencies described by the Campinha-Bacote model, it becomes the role of the cultural broker to implement the elements. One of the major roles of the cultural brokers in health setting is to offer an interpretation to the health professionals and their patients to reduce the challenges associated with cultural differences (Fray, 2013). In a case of divergent opinions, it is easy to understand that jus like in the case of any conflict that comes from cultural differences within the medical setting, there must be conflicts emerging from wandering opinions from members. This assertion holds because human beings have different levels of understanding and differing capacities to address various issues. Additionally, the competence of solving problems and reasoning abilities vary with individuals and it becomes very difficult to convince the entire group members to come to a common conclusion (Cross, Moore & Ockerby, 2014).
Evaluation Tool
The evaluation tool that can be used to test the applicability of cultural competencies in the Colombian American culture is testing the applicability of the competencies on the health settings in Colombia. Dealing with different cultures is a complicated situation to the medical specialists and there must be a way out of dealing with these challenges. For instance, in some situation where medics and patients do not have effective communication due to differing cultural beliefs, it is difficult to allocate the duties and obligations equally. However, through understanding and proper project management, individual members need to understand their roles, obligations, and expectations of the members and then agree whether they are comfortable or they need adjustments.
Conclusion
The Colombian-American culture has various influences on the health setting of the Columbians, the cultural brokers, and society. Therefore, there is a need to ensure that the negative effects emerging from multiculturalism are reduced. Several new ideas, concepts, operational models, and theories are learnt from the study of the effects and impacts of cultural differences in the healthcare setting. These elements include team development procedures, the allocation of roles and responsibilities to members, and practice monitoring and evaluation techniques. Additionally, the communication skills that are used in such situations are enhanced for better performance in the future. The implications of cultural differences to in medicine include the view that practitioners need to have sufficient problem-solving techniques, which are beneficial in addressing matters that might hinder effective implementation of the goals and objectives of practice where individuals from different cultures are involved in conflicts in medical set ups.
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