Nurses working in the global context must avoid imposing their own cultural views on the communities with which they are working, lecturers at the conference "The Role of Nursing in Promoting Global Health: The Power of One" held at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center on Monday, told the more than 50 nurses who attended the event.
"We have to be careful not to become ethnocentric in the relationships with our partners," Devon Berry, a University of Cincinatti College of Nursing nursing professor, said in his lecture. "Caring is not Americanism."
The conference was focused on examining the effect that nurses can have on global health care, Debra Hastings, director of continuing nursing education at DHMC's Center for Continuing Education in the Health Sciences, said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
"Nurses and other health care providers must understand the impact of the social and cultural factors of health beliefs and behaviors in order to provide care that is truly evidence-based," Hastings said.
In his lecture, "Exporting Health Care: Understanding what Nurses Bring to Global Health," Berry argued that nurses working abroad should focus on disease prevention.
"If you build a health care system based on prevention, chances are you'll need less hospital beds," he said.
Prevention has to occur at the community level, Berry said, while hospitals and clinics focus on treating diseases.
He also encouraged nurses to communicate with their counterparts in different countries.
"Now, due to technology, you can share your nursing experience without getting on a plane," he said. "It will be very good both for you and the host country."
Berry said he learned firsthand that American nursing practices cannot always be adapted to other cultures when he worked in a clinic in Western Africa as a nursing student.
While he was used to American hospitals where "gloves are tossed a mile a minute," the clinic sterilized plastic gloves so that they could be reused.
"The question is, what nursing principles are we looking to export, and how do they fit into the culture of the recipients?" he said.
Rita Severinghaus, the continuing care manager at DHMC's Office of Care Management, gave similar advice to nurses in her lecture, "Heart to Heart: Nurses' Health Initiatives in the Dominican Republic."
Severinghaus has worked for years with communities in Cotui, Dominican Republic, an area with some of the highest poverty and unemployment rates in the Western hemisphere.
She said it is important for nurses to understand each culture's practices and views towards health.
"Cultural competency in health care means having the knowledge, abilities and skills to deliver care congruent with the clients' cultural beliefs and practices," Severinghaus said. "Any advice you offer has to be sustainable with their lifestyle."
Colleen Warren, a DHMC clinical nurse specialist, said in a lecture at the event that the current emphasis on nursing's global impact comes at an important time for the profession.
"2010 is the international Year of the Nurse,' and we hoped to call attention to that and also to what nurses have contributed to this effort and their potential in improving global health," Warren said.
