Module 4.4

Question 1

What 3 factors influence the diversity of Canada?

Answer 1

• The various cultures of the Aboriginal people
• The heritage of the British and French founding nation
• The diverse cultures of immigrants to our country

Question 2

What is culture?

Answer 2

The integrated lifestyle, the learned and shared beliefs, values, worldviews, knowledge, artifacts, rules and symbols that guide behavior of a particular group of people.

Question 3

What are the building clocks which cultural groups are based on?

Answer 3

The individuals

Question 4

How are culture and ethnicity related?

Answer 4

Culture is the symbolic markers used by ethnic groups to distinguish themselves visibly from each other

Question 5

What is ethnicity?

Answer 5

involves cultural, organizational, ad ideational values, attitudes, and behaviours. Groups whose members share a common social and cultural heritage, passed through generations. People will identify based on common ancestral, cultural, national and social experience.

Question 6

What is cultural pluralism/relativism?

Answer 6

The view that beliefs are influenced by and best understood within the context of culture.

Question 7

What is multiculturalism?

Answer 7

A set of ideas and practices for engaging cultures, as different yet equal, for the purpose of living together with those differences.

Question 8

What is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

Answer 8

Declared the equality of every Canadian, including the right to equal protection equal benefit of the law without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, sex or mental or physical disability.

Question 9

What are facilitators of multiculturalism?

Answer 9

Government programs and policies, community ad organizational initiatives, and professional and individual responsibilities.

Question 10

What are barriers to multiculturalism?

Answer 10

Barriers to multiculturalism are prejudice, ethnocentrism (tendency to see reality through one’s own cultural perspective), stereotyping, racism and discrimination.

Question 11

What are benefits to multiculturalism?

Answer 11

Benefits include the existence of the policy demonstrates concern for the quality of human relations, the policy is a primary prevention program, diversity is a resource, Multiculturalism permits Canada to better meets its national and international obligations to human right, multiculturalism has the potential to promote social and psychological well being of Canadians.

Question 12

What does attunement mean?

Answer 12

Being or bringing into harmony

Question 13

What is cultural attunemnet?

Answer 13

This can be viewed as content knowledge, community health nurses learn about unique customs, rules, rituals, and norms of specific ethnic groups. However, we must keep in mind that be cannot use this knowledge to objectify certain groups. It is important to ask and consider personal meanings which individuals use to describe their own ethnicity.

Question 14

What are Hoskins 5 principles to assist those working towards cultural attunement?

Answer 14

• Acknowledging the pain of oppression
• Engaging in acts of humility
• Acting with Reverence
• Engaging in mutuality
• Maintaining a position of “not knowing”

Question 15

How is it helpful, in working towards cultural attunement, to acknowledge the pain of oppression?

Answer 15

Recognizing that privilege (often White privilege) is always at play in some regard, and creating situations of power imbalance is absolutely necessary to have honest communication to build trust and respect. Taking responsibility is a large step to seek to grow and change oppressive tendencies.

Question 16

How is it helpful, in working towards cultural attunement, to engage in acts of humility?

Answer 16

Humility is an act of restraint, temperance, and modesty. Hoskins challenges us to be vulnerable and reach into the space between ourselves and others, even if it is not well received by someone who has been marginalized by a dominant culture. When we abandon our social comfort, we surrender our cultural perspectives biases and expectations of certain behaviour.

Question 17

How is it helpful, in working towards cultural attunement, to act with reverence?

Answer 17

Respect for difference is a quality necessary for health professionals, however we must act with reverence, honour, and regard. We must live, model and teach reverence so that when differences arise we more than just respect them, but feel a deep sense of awe. This will nurture souls and spirits

Question 18

How is it helpful, in working towards cultural attunement, to engage in mutuality?

Answer 18

When we can share a similarity with someone while developing a relationship, feelings of connection begin. When we find common ground, likenesses and similarities from our world with someone else, this can build meaningful relationships. These relationships are the foundation for partnerships; therefore, based on connections through difference, we can achieve mutually determined outcomes.

Question 19

How is it helpful, in working towards cultural attunement, to maintain a position of ‘not knowing’?

Answer 19

It Is important to be comfortable in a position of not knowing everything about a culture, as this is where learning is most effective. Abandoning the need to know everything for certain, allows us to be tentative, experimental and open-ended, which is most useful in community practice. The most important role of the community heath worker is to be a learner.

Question 20

What is cultural safety?

Answer 20

Cultural safety refers to gaining an understanding of others’ health beliefs and practices so that one’s actions demonstrate working toward equity and the avoidance of discrimination by recognition and respect for cultural identity so that a power balance exists between the health care provider and client.

Question 21

Who developed the concept of cultural safety?

Answer 21

Cultural safety was developed by Maori nurse leaders in New Zealand, to gain an understanding of the health care interactions between indigenous Maori people and with European-descended health care providers. The experiences of colonialism have effected this culture in post colonial times.

Question 22

What 3 pieces are the basis of cultural safety?

Answer 22

• Analysis by the Health Professional of their cultural self and its influence on client interactions
• Acknowledgment of the power imbalance favoring the health professional and addressing this so that the client cultural environment is safe
• Learning and applying new foundational skills by the health professional

Question 23

What are the benefits of cultural safety?

Answer 23

• When Community Health Nurses use a cultural safety lens, they involve the client to address health inequities and strive to for social justice.
• Working in this way can help to remove barriers of power and authority and promotes equality.

Question 24

What is a cultural assessment?

Answer 24

• This assessment is a systematic way to identify beliefs, values, meanings, and behaviors or people while considering their history, life experiences and the social and physical environments in which they live.
• This assessment must be completed on all clients (individuals, families, or communities) when they first come in contact with them.

Question 25

What can a CHN do if patients are reluctant to share cultural information?

Answer 25

If clients are reluctant to answer questions, CHNs should seek information from sources such as family members, interpreters, traditional cultural health practitioners, and educational resources.

Question 26

According to the transcultural assessment model, what 6 things need to be considered during a cultural assessment?

Answer 26

• Culturally unique individual
• Communication
• Space
• Social Organization
• Time
• Biological variations

Question 27

Within the Transcultural Assessment Model, what are the 8 subsystems of a community?

Answer 27

• Physical Environment
• Education
• Safety & Transportation
• Politics & Government
• Health & Social Services
• Communication
• Economics
• Recreation

Question 28

Within the Transcultural Assessment Model, why are the lines between the subsystems broken?

Answer 28

The wheel is shown with broken lines between each subsystem to show that they are not discrete, but that all affect each other.

Question 29

What are descriptive features of the Transcultural Assessment Model?

Answer 29

Within the community are lines of resistance which defend against stressors. The strengths of the community also defend against stressors. The communities’ response to stress is motivated by it’s overall health.