Cultural Differences In Nursing Research

Prior to the current spring semester I visited my extended family in Pakistan and it really gave me a rude awakening of some the preconceived beliefs I had of the nursing profession. In South Asian culture nurses are traditionally seen as inferior to doctors, or as their not so needed sidekicks. I grew up with this thought, but having a grandfather who was an RN I thought I’d changed my mind, but I did definitely keep some of the cultural views of nursing buried in my head. Flash forward 3 days later and I began History, Trends and Issues in Health Care and if I had to condense what this course taught me, it’s that without nurses many, many more people would be dead. This course rivaled my beliefs that nurses are secondary in the medical landscape, …show more content…
One of the biggest points I learned in this class is to learn to look at the people, regardless of what they’ve done, I treat as patients, and that I need to be their advocate whenever possible. My group and I did our project on correctional nursing and prior to doing all the research on it, I definitely would not have even considered it a future career option, and now I can see myself applying to a correctional facility because they are an extremely vulnerable populations in need. Furthermore the principles of beneficence, to do good, and non-maleficence, to do no harm get the core of what a nurse should do when giving care. On top of this, nurses need to be advocates for vulnerable populations and help them become autonomous even if it’s not their bedside patient. It’s so saddening and frustrating to think that there are kids in the world that lack the need of clean water, forget about even having the chance to receive proper primary care. As a nurse, the ways to impact public health have been done time and time again. One of the most awe-inspiring examples is Florence Nightingale. Her implementation of better sanitation and nutrition during the Crimean War can be directly correlated to our high life expectancy today. Arguably, Nightingale had the most important contribution to public health as we now know it. Patient advocacy through education is also a trend in health care that helps patient’s become more autonomous which should be one of the main goals of a nurse. It’s no secret that health care is run by money and that means as nurses we need to help patients help themselves to make sure they’re in good hands. Initiatives like Healthy People 2020 looks to advance overall public health by improving the health of all people by reducing the number of preventable illnesses and injuries. It’s also important to point out that “nurses” throughout