Wonderful nursing care has all the time been equated with offering secure, acceptable and compassionate patient-centered care. Embodying these qualities are a should for any nurse, and these rules have all the time been an indicator of nursing training.
Offering care requires a deep understanding and respect for the variations that will exist amongst sufferers, comparable to variations in look, gown, dietary habits, non secular practices and beliefs. It includes recognizing and valuing these variations to ship compassionate and customized care that honors every affected person’s distinctive identification and experiences.
This work, pushed by the influence of social determinants of well being and the hyperlink between spirituality and higher outcomes, emphasizes dialogue, bridge-building and intercultural competence. By way of engaged educating, I assist college students acknowledge, admire and incorporate variations, fostering a deeper understanding of how these components affect affected person care.
To facilitate understanding of those points within the classroom, I designed an interactive puzzle to assist nursing college students embrace holistic, patient-centered care and study to understand the number of components that inform affected person’s lives and their well being care selections. Components comparable to tradition, gender, group, religion and spirituality can considerably influence folks’s well being and selections.
College students start the mission with a clean puzzle within the form of a human physique. Every week at school, as college students research the physique system, study to evaluate that system and follow on one another and mannequins, they acquire medical information and abilities.
However medical abilities alone will not be sufficient to offer holistic care. College students want information, consolation and publicity to components that influence affected person care and choice making. After specializing in hands-on abilities, I work to assist nursing college students develop in intercultural competence and humility by incorporating studying about numerous cultures, eating regimen, gown, rituals, religion/spirituality practices and their influence on care. We search to know, as an illustration, how a Sikh affected person’s head masking is rooted of their perception of modesty and desire for a similar intercourse well being care supplier. We discover Muslin sufferers’ desire for a pork-free eating regimen and which affected person inhabitants could be extra more likely to refuse blood merchandise, amongst different subjects. My purpose is to problem college students’ preconceived assumptions and luxury ranges and encourage them to see issues by means of the affected person’s eyes.
The ultimate step within the puzzle mission is for college kids to “embellish” their puzzle to know that every affected person is excess of the sum of their elements. By way of this mission, they not solely acquire a deeper understanding and consciousness of their friends and turn out to be extra related as a cohort, however they’re additionally left with tangible fashions representing intercultural consciousness and competency — the power to know, respect, take care of and work nicely with folks from various backgrounds.
One other vital consider growing nursing college students’ intercultural competence is enhancing their religion/spiritually literacy, which takes middle stage in my Bridging Religion and Well being initiative. Together with colleagues from the Elon College non secular research division, this interdisciplinary initiative brings collectively pre-licensure nursing, doctor assistant and bodily remedy college students (in addition to their school and employees) to discover and talk about the influence of religion, faith and spirituality on holistic affected person care and well being outcomes. Over three weeks, individuals discover modules that cowl the significance of religion in care, the position of spirituality in supporting sufferers’ non secular wants and insights from non secular leaders on offering care.
By way of interactive dialogue, case research, panel discussions and evidenced based-practice, college students construct religiosity information, communication abilities and consciousness to higher assist sufferers who incorporate religion, spirituality and/or faith into their well being care decision-making. For instance, in a case research that explored finish of life rituals, college students mentioned how they may honor a affected person’s needs that the deceased stay untouched, intact (no organ donation) and unmoved for a interval in at present’s fast-paced inpatient hospital setting the place mattress house is proscribed. Upon completion of the collection, college students earned a micro-credential on Religion and Well being literacy whereas constructing bridges to higher holistic, individualized patient-centered care.
All through each time period, I continually return to my guiding query: What does glorious nursing care seem like and the way can I educate nursing college students to ship this care? To me, it’s patient-centered and holistic care — care that takes cultural consciousness and spirituality into consideration, is compassionate and evidenced-based. In different phrases, glorious nursing care is delivered by an rising nurse who understands, acknowledges and appreciates that delivering care by means of the affected person’s eyes can flip a life round.
Elon College Assistant Professor of Nursing Jeanmarie Koonts, MSN, CNE, has held quite a lot of medical and educational positions all through her skilled profession. By way of dialogue, bridge-building and engaged educating methods, she strives to assist college students acknowledge, admire and incorporate the variations they expertise to higher serve their sufferers.