Healthcare Encounters

PART 1

A thirty-year-old Hispanic male named David was admitted into the emergency room with a gunshot wound that resulted from a drive-by shooting in his neighborhood. When David is stabilized, he is placed in an empty room with two beds at the end of the hallway. The staff in the hospital largely identify as Caucasian. Only three staff in the hospital speak Spanish. The inability to communicate effectively and consistently results in a barrier between staff and David and his family, which frustrates both parties involved in David’s treatment. Additionally, the police have continually come to question David to determine his knowledge and role in the drive-by shooting. Due to the frequent police presence and David’s large group of predominately male visitors, the staff begin to avoid David’s room. Except for admission, not one staff member has actually had a conversation with David. The manager of the hospital quickly sees that David’s interactions with staff have deteriorated to an extent that David’s treatment is compromised.

The Giger-Davidhizar Transcultural Assessment Model (GDTAM) identifies six cultural phenomena that shape health care encounters in the context of diversity: communication, space, social organization, time, environmental control, and biological variations. This model provides a framework for the provider’s cultural assessment and can be used to enhance cultural responsiveness to diverse populations.

In your own words, identify, describe, and apply an example of each of these six identified phenomena in the GDTAM to David’s treatment. For each example, relate how an intervention can be implemented to help increase the staff and hospital’s cultural responsiveness.

You can use the format below to construct your discussion board response:
1. Communication – Define this element of the model. Now explain how you would intervene on David’s behalf to present yourself as a culturally aware and competent staff member.
2. Space – Define this element of the model. Now explain how you would intervene on David’s behalf to present yourself as a culturally aware and competent staff member. (Do this for each of the remaining elements listed below.)
3. Social Organization
4. Time
5. Environmental Control
6. Biological Variations

PART 2

Directions

The Purnell Model (1998) is a visual depiction of twelve domains of patient culture that the provider may need knowledge of as a precondition for the delivery of culturally responsive care. Choose a patient from a minority out-group. List at least three of Purnell’s domains and give an example for each how you, as a health care worker, would go about inquiring and finding information on each domain chosen.

Click here for a link to the Purnell Model.

PART 3

As we learned this week about the different models of Transcultural Nursing, with a reflection on the workplace capability of attitude, evaluate and answer the following questions, as found in Leininger’s Sunrise Model

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What do you believe about health, illness, and death? How does your identity group memberships, such as your gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, profession, etc. influence your belief system? How open are you to seeing the similarities and differences between your belief system and those of others?