Ruth Shearer

Using role play to develop cultural competence.

Role play is a useful teaching strategy for nursing education. This strategy can simulate patient behaviors, as well as demonstrate nursing interventions that students must learn to be clinically competent. Role play is a dramatic technique that encourages participation to improvise behaviors that may be encountered in nurse-patient situations. Using this technique, participants may test behaviors and decisions in an experimental atmosphere without risk of negative effects in a relationship. Role play is useful in developing cultural competence because participants may experience diverse roles. Cultural competence is the ability to care for patients in a culturally sensitive and appropriate manner. In role play, students may participate as culturally diverse patients or as nurses encountering patients from different cultures. Various teaching strategies facilitate successful use of role play in the classroom, including defining a time frame, selected roles, specific objectives, references, and grading criteria. To optimize learning, the importance of exploration and analysis must be emphasized. Many benefits and potential problems accompany use of role play.

When your nursing student is culturally diverse.

Nursing faculty are increasingly confronted with nursing students who are culturally diverse. No longer can traditional educational strategies be expected to work with everyone, and strategies must be selected which meet the needs of the students. This article addresses the need to adapt to diversity in the classroom as well as how to personalize strategies to the needs of the students, plan appropriate interventions, and evaluate interventions for effectiveness. Use of the Giger-Davidhizar assessment model can assist the faculty in assessing for cultural differences and thus can provide a base on which to plan effective interventions.

Your best preparation for a good day's work: a good night's sleep.

Contrary to the manner in which a great many people seem to regard sleep, sleep is not a waste of time. Inadequate sleep, let alone chronic sleep deprivation and actual sleep disorders, leads to diminished quality of work and loss of productivity. As far as caregivers are concerned, inadequate sleep can affect dangerously their ability to function in critical situations. On the other hand, adequate sleep is needed if one is to function at ones potential best and sufficient sleep is also an effective hedge against the encroachment of job stresses. For one who is occasionally unable to get sufficient sleep, there are steps to be taken to improve the ability to rest. A good nights sleep invariably precedes a good days work.

Loneliness and the spouse of the geriatric patient

Loneliness is a painful human experience to which spouses of the geriatric patient are particularly vulnerable. The nurse is frequently in a position to assess not only the patient but the spouse. When factors that may lead to loneliness are present, the nurse can intervene to prevent loneliness. When symptoms of loneliness are present in the spouse or patient, the nurse may act to alleviate disabling feelings of isolation.

Strategies for providing culturally appropriate pharmaceutical care to the Hispanic patient

As the American Hispanic population grows, the need for health care services for individuals who do not speak English is becoming increasingly apparent. Spanish-speaking persons encounter difficulties accessing health care. This article focusses on the special needs of the Spanish-speaking individual in the health care system and presents strategies for providing culturally appropriate care.

It can never be the way it was: helping elderly women adjust to change and loss.

This article was written to help nurses assist elderly women adjusting to change and loss. It describes dynamics that may be present during change and loss such as loneliness and powerlessness. Specific strategies for communicating caring in the operating room are described.

What every health care professional should know about AIDS.

As more and more clients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) are encountered in health care agencies, it is important that the health care professional be well informed with current facts and information on treatment. Supportive care by the health professional is essential to assist the client in maintaining maximum quality of life and a sense of self-esteem and self-efficacy. It is important for the professional to be aware not only of the supportive care needed by clients but also of the safeguards necessary in such a high-risk profession.

Increasing self-confidence through self-talk.

There are varied opinions on the commonness of self-talk. Some feel self-talk is engaged in more by persons who feel insecure and question their performance (Cauchon, 1994). Others feel self-talk is a process people use continually to describe and interpret the world, accurate or inadequate as the case may be. (Hansen, Rhode, and Wolf-Wilets, 1991; Braiker, 1989). Regardless of how much self-talk the nurse is aware of in interacting with clients and intrapsychically, it is important to assess thoughts for their logic or illogicality. Illogical thoughts should be replaced by positive words of encouragement, which will in turn raise the clients or nurses self-concept and level of self-confidence. Making self-talk positive is always good nursing practice.

Soft-spoken managers: a blend of communication styles.

Traits of a soft-spoken person are sometimes seen as negative qualities for managerial positions. Yet, using this technique together with an assertive style can produce clear communication to promote effective relations and to achieve managerial objectives.

E-mail triage.

This article describes how hospital managers can use principles of triage when sending and receiving e-mail. It also discusses when e-mail should not be used, and when personal communication should occur.