1. What was population(s)/were being studied? How many people participated in the study?

The populations that were being studied as indicated in the article are the North American Population including white Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. The other populations that were studied are Sweden population, Chinese, Taiwanese and Vietnamese populations. The number of people who participated in the study was four. These included the elderly Native American who was admitted in a small rural hospital and his wife. Others are the Chinese patient, the mother to the Vietnamese boy who was too ill to be discharged and a nurse.

2. What was the purpose of the study?

The purpose of the study was to determine the extent to which critical care nurses need to adopt cultural competence, the developments in cultural competence and the common pitfalls associated with cultural competence.

3. Is the study qualitative, quantitative or mixed method?

The study employed a mixed method of analysis as it compared the history of the number of myocardial infarctions that the elderly Native American had experienced in the present and in the previous times which was quantitative. The qualitative method of analysis was also used when the Vietnamese cultural believes in babies were being analyzed.

4. What did the author identify as the issue with cultural competency for the study population?

The author identified that lack of cultural awareness and failure to give culturally competent care to patients from different populations could result in increased stress of critically ill patients. This is contributed to by the inadequate care delivered by health care practitioners. This was observed in the Chinese patient who requested for “eating wife” from the nurse attending to him but was misunderstood by the nurse and instead was told to relax and sleep again. Rather the guy wanted a homemade food made of herbs that could only be prepared by his wife. These were also observed in the cultural behaviors of the Vietnamese mother to the ill boy.

5. What theoretical framework/model was used? Why was the model chosen for this specific study?

Conceptual, theoretical framework was used in the study to help provide an abstract description of concepts and phenomenon in cultural competency. The model provides separate meaning and identity of cultural beliefs and practices of different groups of people. The model also provides an intellectual representation of given reality aspects like the culture that is derived from the observation made from the phenomenon. For instance, the model was used in the study to examine different phenomenon observations from the culture of various groups of people including Vietnamese, Chinese, and Americans among others. After the observations, the study provides a comprehensive model of accomplishing cultural competencies such as cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, cultural skill, cultural desire, and cultural encounter.

6. Summarize the results of the study.

The study found out that cultural competency is necessary to understand the beliefs and cultures of different groups of people.  It found that the long distance between the sick child and the parents shows love and strong bonding between parents and the children and not as can be viewed by other groups as odd to the sick children.  The other finding is that Chinese groups prefer their traditional meals to help them recover fast. It also found that some elderly Native Americans prefer “old ways of dying” after making peace with God. Therefore, it suggested that cultural competency is very significant to health practitioners to understand the patients.

7. What did the researcher(s) conclude?

The researchers concluded that culture is one of the most influential things that determine health beliefs and practices. Therefore critical care nurses are needed to have skills and expertise in providing culturally competent and culturally appropriate nursing care. Hence all the nurses must resume to an active role of getting the basic information to develop cultural competency.

8. What are future recommendations?

Future recommendations of the study are avoiding stereotyping of patients into specific ethnic group or culture on the basis of their race, religion, outward appearance, country of origin. Healthcare professionals should also be aware that within the groups there are subgroups with different cultures; therefore, they should know how to handle them. The study also recommended that health professionals should carefully label patients. In this case, the best thing to do is to acculturate or assimilate the patient to a given society; for instance, a person from the US should be labeled “US Citizen.”

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