The next Deans’ Seminar in the 2021-22 series will be held this Friday, January 21, 2022. Barbara White, Assistant Professor of Nursing, will present her research entitled “Teaching 5000 Nurses About Cultural Competence in Saudi Arabia During a Pandemic.” We will meet at noon (before the Academic Senate meeting) via zoom: https://iu.zoom.us/j/93176192536
Abstract:
Saudi Arabia has an insufficient number of nurses to meet the demands of their healthcare system. This is due to the cultural practices of women predominately staying out of the job market, women who are dependent on men for transportation to jobs, and a nursing career viewed as undesirable for both men and women. Therefore, most healthcare agencies use a large number of expatriate nurses. The nursing workforce in Saudi Arabia are 62% female, 60% foreign from 40 different countries but mostly from India, the Philippines, Malaysia, the U.S., and Australia.
In the U.S., the nursing profession is predominately white and female. U.S. nursing is steeped in the tradition of Florence Nightingale, an English nurse who served in the Crimean War and subsequently professionalized nursing from an apprenticeship model to a discipline based in scientific data to determine practice standards. Nightingale’s view of nursing was that of a religious calling for white females. The demographics of the nursing profession in the U.S. are 90% female, 73.3% White/Caucasian, 10.2% Hispanic, 7.8% African American, 5.2% Asian, 1.7% Two or more races, 0.6% Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 0.3% American Indian/Alaskan Native, 1.0% Other.
The two countries have similar challenges, though different sides of the issue. In the U.S., the struggle is a workforce that is much less diverse than the patients it serves. In Saudi Arabia, the struggle is a workforce that is much more diverse, and doesn’t match, the homogenous culture of the Saudi Arabia patients it serves. The profession’s response to both problems is education in cultural competence. These dynamics are similar to those in Social Work and Education who also use the framework of cultural competence.
This presentation will describe the importance of changing the profession of nursing toward a culture of diversity, equity and inclusivity as it relates to patient safety and health outcomes in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. I will present the basic ideas of cultural competence and present a critique of cultural competence as it is used globally by the profession. A reflection of the experience of teaching cultural competence via ten live webinars for 5,000 nurses in Saudi Arabia from January 2021-July 2021 will be presented.