24.4: Chapter Summary
Culturally and linguistically diverse populations continue to grow, and health care professionals, including nurses, are recognizing the need to consider cultural attitudes, beliefs, and values to provide equitable and effective health care to all clients. The CLAS standards provide a framework to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services.
There are a range of tools and strategies, including cultural competency self-assessments, communication, and interventions such as the ACCESS model, that are aimed at identifying strengths and pinpointing areas where improvements can be made in culturally responsive care. By focusing on these aspects, nursing professionals and health care organizations can create an environment where all clients, regardless of their cultural or linguistic background, feel understood, respected, and well-cared for.
Nurses play an important role in promoting organizational cultural and linguistic competency. Nurses can integrate culturally competent behaviors into their daily interactions by putting their awareness, attitude, and knowledge into practice through effective and respectful communication and body language. Nurses, along with other health care professionals, should have the capacity to value diversity, conduct self-assessment, manage the dynamics of difference, acquire, and institutionalize cultural knowledge, and adapt to diversity and the cultural contexts of the communities they serve.