How Culture Affects Motivation
How Culture Affects Motivation
Healthcare often requires a health worker’s engagement with the patient regardless of their culture. Culture plays an important role in attaining effective engagement and affects how a worker provides care. A full understanding of a patient’s culture, exercising cultural knowledge, and appreciating a patient’s culture motivates a worker to work with the patient for optimal health outcomes. According to Suk et al., “incorporating the patient’s views, personal value base and beliefs” are practices a culturally competent nurse employs to provide individualized care (2018 p. 1). Applying such cultural sensitivity in patient care often prompts a positive relationship between a nurse and the patient, thus motivating the health worker. A nurse or physician’s ability to relate with a patient on a personal level yields a patient’s satisfaction and commitment to work towards recovery hence motivating care provision.
On the contrary, if a nurse or physician is faced with strange cultured patients and is unwilling to learn and interact with them, the health worker struggles to provide care. According to Kaihlanen et al, “anxiety … interacting with people from different cultures … affects … engagement in intercultural communication” (2019 p.2). A care provider who struggles to interact with patients from diverse cultures cannot engage properly for effective communication; thus, such disconnect lowers their motivation in care provision. Delivering quality healthcare depends on effective communication; thus, a demotivated provider who cannot engage with patients due to cultural barriers cannot actuate optimal patient outcomes.
References
Kaihlanen Anu-Marja, Hietapakka Laura and Heponiemi Tarja, (2019) “Increasing Cultural Awareness: Qualitative Study of Nurses’ Perceptions about Cultural Competence Training” https://bmcnurs.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12912-019-0363-x pp. 1-9
Suk Hyun Min, Oh Won-Oak and Im YeoJin, (2018) “Factors affecting the cultural competence of visiting nurses for rural multicultural family support in South Korea” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5759751/ pp. 1-9