Nursing Diversity

Broadening the Awareness of Cultural Differences

At the time of this project, I was the nures educator on a 36-bed Women's Health unit.  As we were entering the Christmas holiday season, i began to think about all of the patients we care for from other (diverse) backgrounds.  I realized that, like me, the staff was not attending to the different cultures, customs, and holidays of the diversity of our patients. I decided that we needed to have written materials available for the staff to ensure that they were aware of customs and holidays of other cultures.

I enlisted the help of a friend, a nurse educator from the University of Washington, Seattle, who had developed an extensive reference outlining the various cultural customs and holidays.  The cultures that reflected our patient population included:

• Vietnamese

• Thai

• Chinese

• Muslim (Middle Eastern and African)

• Hispanic

• East Indian
   

The written materials were posted around the unit to provide staff with a quick and readily available resource.  In addition, the written material was put in a notebook and placed with the rest of our staff reference material.

Because of this work, ethnic diversity has become an annual focus on the Women's Health unit.

Sheryl Redlin-Frazier