please see attachment
Week 7 Discussion: Children, Health Policy, and Culturally Competent Care
This discussion will explore two components of appropriate health care for pediatric patients: health policy and cultural competence. .
To create your initial post to this discussion forum, complete the following steps.
Step 1: Choose ONE of the following prompts to discuss:
1. Imagine that you are a nurse lobbyist at the legislature in your state, with a specific focus on child and teen health. The children in this state encompass a broad range of social determinants of health. You are asked to recommend state-wide health policies to improve the health of this population, along with corresponding engagement strategies to reach nurses in the state.
· What would be the first pediatric policy that you would recommend? Please provide a rationale for your selection
· How can you effectively reach nurses to encourage their action to promote the policy?
· What are one or more reasons why many nurses do not engage in lobbying efforts?
2. Describe a pediatric patient and/or their family members that you have cared for who is deemed by healthcare professionals to be ‘difficult’.
· To what extent do you think that cultural factors, e.g. beliefs, values and customs common to a group, might have been implicated in this situation?
· What are one or more barriers to culturally competent care that are specific to the nurse relationship with pediatric patients?
· List at least one strategy that a nurse can employ to overcome barrier(s) to cultural competence with pediatric patients.
Step 2: Post your answer to your chosen prompt to the discussion forum.
· In addition to your original post, be sure to provide a meaningful response to at least two of your peers’ posts by Friday night at 11:59pm Mountain Time. Read other students’ initial postings and respond to at least two other students. Expand on their comments to progress the discussion.
· Your initial post should be 2-3 paragraphs long and follow the requirements outlined in the discussion rubric. Please add to the discussion in your peer responses with informative responses, instead of posts similar to “great idea! I really agree with you.” The initial post and the peer responses have different deadlines. Make sure that your discussion adheres to these deadlines.
· APA guidelines and plagiarism prevention matter in discussion posts just like with other scholarly assignments. Cite all references appropriately using APA format.
Please respond to the two discussion responses below:
Discussion response #1
Culturally competent care in the pediatric setting becomes necessary, as children and their caregivers often come from different cultures and have varying beliefs (Nashwan, 2023). Cultural competency among healthcare workers is achieved through the awareness and removal of barriers even as they employ strategies to improve comprehension and communication.
In a pediatric unit, I have witnessed a family whose cultural beliefs and practices were considered “difficult” by some healthcare providers. The patient was a 7-year-old boy from a South Asian family that follows the traditional culture who had been admitted with severe respiratory infection. They were reluctant to follow medical instructions from the doctor, and instead, they mixed the traditional advice with the treatment plan the doctor had given them.
Cultural issues have considerably affected the way this family accept treatment. The family’s beliefs and customs, the key elements of their cultural traditions, shaped their perspective on healthcare and decision-making. Although the traditional way the family behaved was strange to some healthcare workers, it held significant meaning and importance to the family. The incomprehension of the culture of such people made the newcomers refer to them as “difficult” individuals by those ignorant of their cultural setting.
One of the biggest problems that the nurse-pediatric-patient relationship may encounter is misunderstanding and miscommunication (Wool et al., 2023). The children may be unable to explain and describe their cultural concepts and practices as the grownups. Similarly, nurses may not even recognize that their cultural norms and assumptions are communicated without their knowledge, and this unconscious bias or lack of sensitivity towards the patients’ cultural background may result.
For the sake of overcoming these barriers, nurses may apply diverse approaches. Firstly, the healthcare provider should welcome every patient and family member with a ready mind and willingness to view the whole cultural aspect and give the best care possible. Listening actively, asking polite questions, and calling on interpreters or cultural intermediaries, when necessary, will ensure that the interaction and understanding are on the right path. In addition, nurses should constantly be on the lookout for other professional development resources meant to increase their cultural competency, such as workshops, books, or cultural participation.
References
Nashwan, A. J. (2023). Culturally competent care across borders: Implementing culturally responsive teaching for nurses in diverse workforces.
International Journal of Nursing Sciences, 11(1), 155–157.
to an external site.
Wool, J. R., Chittams, J., Meghani, S. H., Morrison, W., Deatrick, J. A., & Ulrich, C. M. (2023). Development of the perceived miscommunication measure in the pediatric intensive care unit.
Journal of Pediatric Nursing, 71, e135-e141.
to an external site.
Discussion response #2:
The first pediatric health policy I would recommend is expanding access to high-quality early childhood education programs for children from low-income families. This policy directly addresses a key social determinant of health – education and economic stability. Studies have shown that access to high-quality early childhood education programs can have profound positive impacts on the health and well-being of children from disadvantaged backgrounds. This is because it improves cognitive development, school readiness, and academic achievement, setting children on a path for better educational attainment and future economic opportunities (Flaubert et al, 2021). By investing in early childhood education for disadvantaged children, we can interrupt the intergenerational cycle of poverty and its detrimental effects on health and development from the earliest stages of life.
To engage nurses across the state in advocating for this policy, I would leverage nursing associations and unions to mobilize grassroots advocacy campaigns highlighting nurses’ first-hand experiences with the impacts of poverty on child health. By prioritizing this policy and engaging nurses as advocates, we can take a major step towards ensuring all children have equitable opportunities for healthy development from birth. A key reason why nurses fail to participate in lobbying efforts is because of time, workload, and lack of organizational support. Nurses often face demanding schedules and workloads, leaving little time for activities outside of direct patient care (Morris, 2024). There is also a lack of institutional support and resources allocated for nurses to engage in lobbying and policy work (Morris, 2024). One way to get around this is by providing exposure to lobbying before they start their nursing careers. By including the various aspects of lobbying and policy making in the nursing curriculum, it allows the students to become more familiar with these avenues which could lead them to want to be a part of those arenas once they finish school.
References
Flaubert J., Le Menestrel, S., & Williams, D. (2021). The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity. National Library of Medicine.
to an external site.
Morris, G. (2024). Why policy engagement is the next big nursing trend. Nurse Journals.
to an external site.
