Baccalaureate-prepared nurses are expected to demonstrate cultural competency in their professional practice. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN; 2008) defines cultural competence as “the attitudes, knowledge, and skills necessary for providing quality care to diverse populations.” The ability to provide culturally competent nursing care requires that each nurse have an understanding of his or her own cultural awareness and competency. The purpose of this assignment is to provide an opportunity for you to perform a self-assessment and analysis in order to determine personal knowledge, attitudes, and biases related to cultural awareness and competency in providing culturally-appropriate nursing care. Tasks For this assignment, complete the self-assessment questions and summarize the results in terms of your personal cultural awareness and competency. Analyze your knowledge and attitudes (as revealed by the self-assessment) in relationship to skills needed to provide culturally competent nursing care in your practice setting. Evaluate how your personal biases influence your ability to provide culturally sensitive patient care. First, complete this self-assessment survey. NUR302 Self-Assessment Survey A self assessment of multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skill (September 8, 2011) Sage publishing. Objective: To audit your own abilities to demonstrate multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skill. Description: This inventory of questions allows the student to self-assess the extent to which multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skill have been achieved. Some participants will over-estimate the degree of competence and others will under-estimate their competence. This list of questions resembles a test in which the student will grade their own answers if and when they were to take the time required to answer the questions. Each student will assign themselves a grade based on their own self-assessment. Time required: About an hour Risk/expertise level: Low Procedure: 1. Read the following items and indicate how well you think you would be able to answer the item (using your own criteria) if you were to write out an answer.” 2. If you think you would provide an excellent answer give yourself an ‘A’, if you think your answer would be generally good give yourself a ‘B’, if you think your answer would be acceptable but not as good as you would like give yourself a ‘C’, and if you feel unable to answer the question give yourself an ‘F’. 3. At the end of this self-assessment compute your “grade point average: with an A counting for 3 points, a B for 2 points, a C for 1 point, and an F for 0 points. 4. Divide the number of points you awarded yourself by the number of items to get your GPA. Debriefing: Will be discussed in class Self Assessment Survey A: AWARENESS QUESTIONS 1. Can you construct a genogram of your family for the last three generations on your mother’s and father’s side? 2. What is your “cultural heritage”? 3. How well do you value and respect and model cultural differences in your life? 4. Who are the significant people in your lifetime who have influenced your attitudes, values, and biases? 5. What are the cultures you least understand and why? 6. What do you do to recruit clients who are different from you in race, ethnicity, culture, and beliefs? 7. What culturally learned assumptions do you have which are different from those of other counselors? 8. In what ways do issues of oppression, racism, discrimination, and stereotyping influence how you do counseling? 9. To what extent would you consider yourself as having “racist attitudes, beliefs, and feelings”? 10. Have you had any social impact in your career as a counselor? 11. Can you do counseling in a variety of different communication styles? 12. Do you know how your culturally different clients feel about your natural communication style? 13. In what specific ways have you trained yourself to work with culturally different clients? 14. In what specific ways do you evaluate your counseling work with culturally different clients? 15. When do you refer you culturally different clients to others better trained to work with them? 16. When have you sought consultation from more qualified resource persons when working with culturally different clients? 17. How well do you understand yourself and your own cultural identity? 18. How well are you able to present a nonracist identity as a counselor to culturally different clients? 19. Do you have a plan for increasing your multicultural awareness in the future? 20. Do you consider yourself to have achieved multicultural awareness? B: KNOWLEDGE 1. Can you describe the social, political, and economic history of negative emotional reactions toward specific racial and ethnic groups? 2. How well can you do counseling with clients whose beliefs and attitudes are profoundly different from your own? 3. Can you be nonjudgmental toward clients whose beliefs are profoundly different from your own? 4. Are you aware of stereotypes and preconceived notions in your counseling practice? 5. Do you provide counseling to clients without knowing about their cultural attitudes, values, and backgrounds? 6. Are you aware of the life experiences, cultural heritages, and historical backgrounds of your culturally different clients? 7. Are you aware of the similarities and differences between yourself and your clients? 8. Are you able to explain how your client’s cultural background affects a. personality formation? b. vocational choices? c. manifestation of psychological disorders? d. help-seeking behavior? e. appropriate counseling approaches? 9. Can you intelligently discuss sociopolitical issues that influence the quality of life of your clients? 10. Can you discuss immigration issues that influence the quality of life of your clients? 11. Can you discuss poverty issues that influence the quality of life of your clients? 12. Can you discuss racism issues that influence the quality of life of your clients? 13. Can you discuss stereotyping issues that influence the quality of life of your clients? 14. Can you discuss powerlessness issues that influence the quality of life of your clients? 15. In the last month, have you read books and/or articles regarding culture and mental health issues of clients within your client population? 16. In the last month, have you participated in training to increase your knowledge and understanding of cultural contexts where counseling occurs? 17. In the last month have, you been actively involved with cultural minority groups outside your role as a counselor? 18. In the last month, have you been actively involved with community events? 19. …with social functions? 20. …with political functions? 21. …with celebrations? 22. …with friendships? 23. …with neighborhood gatherings? C: SKILLS 1. Do you refer in counseling to your client’s religious and/or spiritual beliefs and values? 2. Do you refer in counseling to your client’s attributions? 3. Do you refer in counseling to your client’s taboos? 4. Do you refer in counseling to your client’s world views? 5. Do you understand how these beliefs and attitudes affect psychosocial functioning and expressions of distress? 6. Can you talk with your clients about their indigenous helping practices and respect indigenous help-giving networks? 7. Are you able to defend the positive value of bilingualism or multilingualism? 8. Do you understand the generic characteristics of counseling and therapy? 9. Do you understand the culture-bound features? 10. Do you understand the class-bound features? 11. Do you understand the linguistic features? 12. Can you explain why clients from a minority group might be reluctant to seek out counseling? 13. Can you identify ways that your own cultural background might cause conflict with your minority clients from a different background? 14. Do you compensate for the cultural bias in tests developed in and for one cultural context when those tests are used with a culturally different population? 15. Do you interpret your assessment data differently to culturally different clients who come from significantly different backgrounds? 16. Do you incorporate information about your client’s indigenous family structure into your counseling interviews? 17. Do you incorporate information about your client’s hierarchies into your counseling interviews? 18. Do you incorporate information about your client’s values into your counseling interviews? 19. Do you incorporate information about your client’s beliefs into your counseling interviews? 20. Do you incorporate information about your client’s community resources into your counseling interviews? 21. Are you able to change relevant discriminatory practices in the community that affect the psychological welfare of your clients? 22. Do you have a large repertoire of verbal and nonverbal skills to match with the cultural contexts of your different clients? 23. Is the verbal message your client receives the same as the message sent and intended? 24. Is the nonverbal message your client receives the same as the message sent and intended? 25. Are you skilled in a variety of different helping roles, methods, or approaches? 26. When you’re helping style is limited or inappropriate will you know enough to change? 27. Are you able to intervene with and change the social institutions in your client’s cultural context? 28. Are you able to tell when a client’s problem relates to cultural bias by others from when the problem might be personal to the client? 29. Do you consult with traditional healers from your client’s cultural context? 30. Do you consult with religious leaders from your client’s cultural context? 31. Do you consult with spiritual leaders from your client’s cultural context? 32. Do you consult with other practitioners? 33. Are you fluent in the first language of your clients? 34. Do you use a translator when working with clients whose language you do not understand? 35. Do you incorporate traditional assessment and testing instruments from your client’s cultural context into your counseling with them? 36. Do you always have the necessary technical skills in the tests or measures you use with your culturally different clients? 37. Do you work actively to eliminate biases, prejudices, and discriminatory practices in your community? 38. Do you take responsibility for educating your clients about your own culturally learned orientation to psychological intervention, outcome goals, expectations, and legal rights? Second, write a 4- to 6-page report in which you reflect on and evaluate your cultural awareness and competency. Complete all of the following: •Summarize the results of your personal cultural awareness and competency. In writing this summary, you must reference the self-assessment tool. •Analyze the results of the assessment with regard to personal knowledge and attitudes (as revealed by the self-assessment). •Discuss your assessed knowledge and attitudes in relationship to skills needed to provide culturally competent nursing care (as indicated by the readings completed in this course). •Evaluate how personal biases influence the nurse’s ability to provide culturally sensitive patient care. Make sure to include a brief discussion of how personal attitudes and biases can influence the degree to which nurses can achieve cultural competence. •Attach the completed self-assessment as an appendix to your report. Write in a clear, concise, and organized manner; demonstrate ethical scholarship in accurate representation and attribution of sources; and display accurate spelling, grammar, and punctuation.