Catharine Jenkins
Birmingham City University, United Kingdom
Title: Lessons from transcultural care: Considering implications for the global nursing crisis, for ourselves and each other
Biography
Biography: Catharine Jenkins
Abstract
There is a global crisis in nursing in which we are struggling to provide adequate person-centred, sensitive care for an ageing population. Patients have more complex needs but still judge and appreciate nurses based on the quality of our relationships with them. But nursing shortages mean it is hard for nurses to spend quality time with patients. The nursing population is ageing too, and when we lose colleagues to retirement it is difficult to recruit enough candidates to replace them, then difficult to retain our younger colleagues. The more committed the nurse, the less they are able to cope with disappointment in their ability to care to the high standard set and the more likely they are to leave the profession. Burnout is sadly common… it seems nursing is sick too.
While we come from different cultural backgrounds, we share a culture of nursing. But it is always difficult to reflect on one’s own cultural values until we see ourselves from an outsider’s perspective. Either that or by becoming an outsider ourselves! Many nurses have moved from one homeland to another, and their insights offer us a way to explore our own cultural values.
The nature of how we perceive ‘person-centredness’ may vary between nurses of different professional backgrounds, but for each of us, our ‘personhood’ includes aspects of the different cultures to which we belong. The ability to be truly person-centred depends upon having our own cultural and personhood needs met. Transcultural nursing principles and practices have the potential to help nurses look after each other and themselves. Catharine Jenkins will argue that this is essential for the well-being of our future patients and an investment in the future of our profession.