Cultural Influences in Nursing in Community Health and Cultural Assessment
Submitted by: Valerie Mantz, RN, MSN
Description: This is a group of activities to familiarize students to qualities that develop cultural
competence in nurses as well as barriers to cultural competence. This activity expands to include
assessing or learning about a culture through universal basic organizing factors of: communication,
space, social organization, time perception, environmental control, biological variations and nutrition.
Purpose (Target Issue & Related Teaching Goals):
-To promote and awareness of the dimensions or qualities to develop within oneself to become
culturally competent
-To promote and awareness of qualities that are barriers to developing cultural competence
-To identify the unique qualities of a culture through the framework of basic organizing factors.
Time to Prepare: Prepare and cut out definition cards before class: one hour
Time for Lesson (in-class): Two hours initial class, one to two hour follow up/share class
Time for Lesson (out-of-class): Students need to read the chapter from Stanhope/Lancaster on Cultural
Influences (one hour) and will need time to interview a person for the cultural assessment and type it up
(2 hours)
Required Expertise of Facilitator:
Group size: 20 plus
Language level/readability: At least a high school level/readability
Required Materials: Powerpoint, Cultural Awareness Definition Cards, Butcher block paper,
Related Handouts: Cultural Awareness Definition Cards.doc;
Related Media or Website: Culturally Competent Nursing Care Powerpoint
Location of Media: Powerpoint is located on RTC T drive: Shared/Diversity Team/Diversity Activities
Database
Additional References and Resources: Stanhope, Marcia and Lancaster, Jeanette. Foundation of
Nursing in the Community; Community-Oriented Practice. St Louis: Mosby/Elsevier. Chapter Five
“Cultural Influences in Nursing in Community Health” Page 82-83
Step-by-Step Procedure:
1. Present power points related to cultural competence, barriers and assessment.
2. Students will divide into two groups and “sort” key terminology and definition cards to match on
the terminology related to cultural competence and barriers. Once sorted and placed on the
wall they will correct with the key and discuss why the correct answer may be different than
what they thought.
3. Students will divide into 6 groups, one for each organizing factor. They will read together the
material from their chapter on that particular factor and then on “butcher block” paper form
questions that they might ask a person of a different culture that represent this factor. The
questions will be discussed as a whole class and specific questions will be selected and agreed
upon for the cultural assessment.
4. Students will take the self determined questionnaire and interview a person from a different
culture with those questions and write up a cultural description of the culture based on the
person’s answers. These will be shared in a following class.
Adaptations and Extensions: While I utilized this with nursing students, I can imagine it would have a
wide variety of applications in various business and service organization settings. The questionnaire may
be modified to omit the biologic and nutritional variances if they do not apply.
Pros: Comprehensive. This plan really gets a student to think about their own personal development in
relation to cultural competence in nursing. It also gives them a framework on which to increase their
knowledge about different cultures.
Cons: Time consumption.
Consider This: Having the assessment questionnaire premade by instructor.
Instead of definition cards sorted in groups pass out a matching exercise on paper
Role play various examples of any of the key terms as they apply to the course
Student Outcomes/Objectives:
 Develop an understanding of their own personal development towards cultural competence
 Know the basic organizing factors of a culture and useful questions to ask in understanding them
in a given culture.
Submitted by: Valerie Mantz, RN, MSN Spring 2009