Cultural Diversity: Clients, Context, and Caring
Health Promotion and Caring for Communities and Families
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Week 4: Friday October 11, 2013

Prologue
Care is the essence of nursing. Care involves recognizing and transcending the barriers and challenges established by cultural differences. The nurse considers the common threads that are held by all, as well as the unique elements maintained by the client
What is Culture? * Culture is a learned, patterned behavioural response acquired over time that includes implicit versus explicit beliefs, attitudes, values, customs, norms, taboos, arts, and life ways accepted by a community of individuals. Culture is primarily learned and transmitted in the family and other social organizations, is shared by the majority of the group, includes an individualized worldview, guides decision making, and facilitates self worth and self-esteem * “The learned, shared, and transmitted values, beliefs, norms and lifeways of a particular culture that guides thinking, decisions and actions in patterned ways and often intergenerationally” (Leininger, 2006 as cited in Stamler& Yiu, 2012, p. 125) * Culture is more than beliefs, practices, and values (Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada, 2009) * Culture is learned, shared, and changes. It also encompasses all aspects of our lives. What we have learned to value represents our assumptions about how to perceive, think, and behave in acceptable, appropriate, and meaningful way
Characteristics Shared by all Cultures
Culture is: * socially constructed * an integrated system * shared * largely implicit and tacit * fluid and dynamic * expressed and intersects with other social constructs such as race, gender, ethnicity, class, language, and disability
Diversity
* Refers to variety and