| Summary: | The increasing cultural diversity of British
Columbia is affecting the delivery of health care.
Although there is extensive literature outlining the
knowledge and skills required by nurses to provide
culturally sensitive care, little is known about the
perspective of nurses providing this care. The purpose of
this study was to identify and describe the main issues
for nurses who cared for culturally diverse clients and
families in a paediatric inpatient setting. The second
focus of this study was to describe the resources and
supports nurses utilized and needed in order to provide
this care. Kleinman's (1978) conceptualization of the
three domains in which health is experienced and reacted
to provided direction for examining the effects of
conflicting explanatory models of health and illness from
the nurse's perspective. A descriptive approach was used
to address the following two research questions : 1) What
issues do nurses identify as influencing their ability to
provide culturally sensitive care in a paediatric
setting? and 2) What agency-based resources facilitate or
hinder the nurses' ability to provide culturally
sensitive care?
The investigator used a convenience sampling
approach to recruit 42 respondents from a paediatric
inpatient setting. A questionnaire developed and piloted by Lynam, Sauro et.al (1990) was adapted and used for
this study. Content analysis was used to analyze openended
responses, and descriptive statistics were
calculated for the fixed-response questions.
Communication was the overriding issue paediatric
nurses faced. The communication barrier influenced the
nurses' ability to assess clients and to provide care.
When nurses were unable to provide optimal care, they
experienced frustration and moral and ethical dilemmas.
Nurses reported their ability to provide care was
dependent upon the resources available. Difficulties were
overcome when the nurse's personal philosophy valued
client differences, and enabled her to negotiate with the
client. Availability of interpreter services and
resources to assist communication also affected the
nurse's ability to provide care.
Implications arising from this study for nursing
education, practice and research are discussed. === Applied Science, Faculty of === Nursing, School of === Graduate
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