Reflection On Cultural Awareness

Culture

Culture is a notoriously difficult concept to define as it is used to mean a number of things in many ways. According to Tyler ' study in 1870, culture includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other habits obtained by a man as a member of society (cited in Spencer-Oatey 2012).[1]Culture has significant effects on one 's behaviours. For instance, choice of outfits to wear can be differentiated by different people based on their wealth and occupation. Additionally, culture is in association with social groups. As almost everyone belongs to a variety of different groups simultaneously and people inevitably carry a few layers of mental programming within themselves in accordance with different levels of culture

[5][7] It is not only about learning formal rituals but it is also about learning emotional, social,economic and political context from the people.[6]

At this stage, it is important to focus on exploring and learning cultural differences. Taylor and Guerin(2014) state that during the learning process of differences, inappropriate behaviour or interaction and stereotyping may result due to the impossibility of learning all aspects of culture upfront within the practitioner 's practice. Therefore, when the care provider has more knowledge on cultural awareness, it makes it easier for themto achieve the principle of the cultural safety.

Cultural sensitivity

The other component of cultural awareness is cultural sensitivity, which is being sensitive about the differences through the learning process of cultural awareness.

The most important thing is to understand one 's own culture in order to understand others. It is also about the full awarenessof legitimacy that cultural difference is

It has been defined in many ways. Sometimes it is difficult to discriminate cultural competence and cultural safety. Competence refers to the practitioner but safety means more broadly the practitioner the system and most importantly the client who is the only one able to assess the service as culturally safe (Taylor & Guerin 2014).[16] The various definitions usually refer to people’s will and actions to build understanding between people, to be respectful and open to different cultural perspectives, strengthen cultural security and work towards equality in opportunity (Murphy 2011, p.5).[17] It includes being aware of one’s own world view, developing positive attitudes towards cultural differences, gaining knowledge of different cultural practices and world views and developing skill skills for communication and interaction across cultures. It can be applied on three levels: individual level, service level and system level. If a nurse wants to become culturally competent, he should learn knowledge, attitudes and skills that support caring for people across different language and cultures. Knowledge is the foundation of cultures in the service area, especially the relationship between health care practices and beliefs. Attitudes refer to avoid making biases and prejudices about patients’ culture and skills mean to learn different languages to communicate with