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What does it mean to be culturally safe when caring for a South Asian client with diabetes? 
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Culturally safe care is a concept that is fundamental in nursing practice, as it supports health promotion in the client. The purpose of culturally safe care is to emancipate individuals and groups from “situations that arise when people from one ethnocultural group believe they are ‘demeaned, diminished or disempowered by the actions and the delivery systems of people from another culture’” (p47). Cultural safety “is determined by the client” (Stamler & Yiu, 2005, p253), not by the care provider. To be able to answer any questions or concerns regarding disease processes, it is essential to have a strong foundation of pathophysiology. Lewis, Heitkemper, and Dirksen (2004) define diabetes mellitus as a disease of various organs, either caused by “abnormal insulin production, impaired insulin utilization, or both” (p1268). There are two types of diabetes, type I and type II. Type I diabetes mellitus usually occurs in individuals under the age of 30, who are extremely deficient or lack insulin production, these people require insulin injections (Minhas, 2000). In type II diabetes mellitus, insulin production is insufficient in regulating blood glucose levels (Lewis et al., 2004). Misra and Vikram (2004) classify South Asians as people “ belonging to heterogeneous ethnicities from various countries in the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, etc.)” (p482). Diabetes in the South Asian community is on the rise. In the common Indian languages, such as Punjabi, diabetes mellitus is referred to as ‘sugar’ (Minhas, 2000). “A recent analysis by the International Diabetes Epidemiology Group comparing the profile of type 2 diabetes in the European and Asian populations showed that the South Asians had the strongest age associated risk for diabetes among all the groups. South Asians had several fold higher prevalence at all age groups in comparison with the Europeans” (Ramachandran, Snehalatha, & Vijay, 2004, p190). |
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Created By: Inderjit (Indy) Barn