As a community health nurse, LW is responsible for promoting health, preventing diseases, and providing medical treatment and rehabilitation. LW practices in an urban community where individuals have different values and beliefs. Thus, she must show cultural sensitivity and respect when delivering care to build trust. Kaihlanen et al. (2019) mentioned that nurses must appropriately respond to attitudes or feelings of a group of individuals sharing similar cultural and religious values and beliefs.
Emerging Populations in the United States and their Cultural Characteristics that Might Interfere with their Healthcare
Emerging populations in the United States include African Americans and Asian Americans. Cultural characteristics specific to African Americans include beliefs that religion is a powerful force and preserved ethnic identity. Shepherd et al. (2018) mentioned that African Americans generally mistrust Caucasians and believe they are undervalued and not respected. African Americans may not recognize medical care because they believe that religion is a powerful force and that prayer is crucial for preventing diseases and healing the sick. Therefore, since African Americans do not trust Caucasians, they do not trust western medicine and treatment procedures. They also feel that they are undervalued and disrespected in the community. Consequently, they believe healthcare providers, including community health nurses, do not value and respect them. It means the community health nurse must understand the cultural characteristics of their patients to build trust. Religious beliefs are the foundation of cultural characteristics of Asian Americans. They believe that prayers are fundamental to preventing diseases and religious spirits help people stay healthy.
Roles and Responsibilities of the Nurse
Community health nurses deliver care at individual, family, and community levels. They enable learning in the community to promote positive health behaviors. Community health nurses play a crucial role in effective healthy lifestyle behaviors in the community to facilitate health promotion and preventative care (Nissanholtz-Gannot et al., 2017). They advocate for the marginalized groups in the community by addressing issues affecting their health care, such as health disparities. They manage healthcare services at the community level by overseeing populations’ health needs and conducting community health needs.
Challenges that One Can Anticipate when Fulfilling Various Roles as a Nurse Practitioner
Challenges that one can anticipate as a community health nurse practitioner include, , limited trust from patients since they often preferred to be attended by medical doctors. Therefore, it is imperative to be confident and demonstrate that nurse practitioners have the ability to diagnose and treat patient as well. Moreover, community nurse practitioners interact with individuals with different cultural values and beliefs, facing rejection. In this case, LW works as a nurse practitioner in an urban community and individuals living there have diverse cultural values and beliefs. Thus, due to cultural and religious differences, she might experience rejection when caring for community members. Therefore, showing respect towards others beliefs is crucial to gain their trust. Also, inadequate staffing is one of the significant issues affecting the nursing profession in the United States. Thus, the community health nurse practitioner might experience inadequate staffing that contributes to nurse burnout, affecting the quality of healthcare delivery, hence time management plays a role to be able to accomplish all the tasks in a timely manner.
Patient Population that is Most Likely to Experience Health Disparities
Causes of health disparities include low socioeconomic status, environmental issues, inadequate access to healthcare, and behavioral factors (Purnell et al., 2016). Thus, populations that are most likely to experience health disparities include African Americans, Asian Americans, American Indians, sexual and gender minorities, and socially economically disadvantaged groups. These populations have low socioeconomic status, hindering access to quality care. For instance, they lack access to quality education that can enable them to secure professional jobs to get appropriate health insurance covers. Sexual and gender minorities like the LGBTQ can experience health disparities because they are marginalized and perceived as an underserved population.
References
Kaihlanen, A. M., Hietapakka, L., & Heponiemi, T. (2019). Increasing cultural awareness: Qualitative study of nurses’ perceptions about cultural competence training. BMC Nursing, 18(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-019-0363-x (Links to an external site.)
Nissanholtz-Gannot, R., Rosen, B., & Hirschfeld, M. (2017). The changing roles of community nurses: The case of health plan nurses in Israel. Israel Journal of Health Policy Research, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13584-017-0197-5 (Links to an external site.)
Purnell, T. S., Calhoun, E. A., Golden, S. H., Halladay, J. R., Krok-Schoen, J. L., Appelhans, B. M., & Cooper, L. A. (2016). Achieving health equity: Closing the gaps in health care disparities, interventions, and research. Health Affairs, 35(8), 1410–1415. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2016.0158 (Links to an external site.)
Shepherd, S. M., Willis-Esqueda, C., Paradies, Y., Sivasubramaniam, D., Sherwood, J., & Brockie, T. (2018). Racial and cultural minority experiences and perceptions of health care provision in a mid-western region. International Journal for Equity in Health, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-018-0744-x
