Culture is an essential aspect of every person's life. It defines the ways its people should live in terms of behaviors and activities accepted by the society; this is governed by the availability of norms which members should adhere to. In our lives today, culture dictates human inner and outer feelings such as pain, aggression, and other perceptions (Lowe and Archibald, 2009). The feelings expressed by an individual from a given culture towards a certain person or occasion are directly proportional.
Societies on this universe have developed cultural beliefs and practices of identifying and coping up with pain. This poses difficulties to nurses as they should understand their patients well before attending to them. To begin with, people express different emotions towards pain; people from some ethnic societies tend to tolerate the pain (Bednarz and Doorenbos, 2010). For instance, this is common in many African communities such that they are taught to be brave and endure pain in the circumstances arising. Members go through rituals such as circumcision and piercing, which prepare them physically, socially and mentally.
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On the other hand, most White people in European countries moan or cry when exposed to painful scenarios. Secondly, diverse ethnic groups differ in describing distressing occasions. Most African traditional people only perceive few circumstances such as piercing being painful while others are just considered to be mild. On the contrary, a large number of Europeans consider many occasions to be unpleasant despite being in small proportions. Culture brings a dilemma of ineffective pain treatment; different practices evidence this. Unlike in Western countries where people are offered medical support in advance, patients in Eastern Civilization prefer medicinal herbs and other relevant therapies. This issue of cultural diversity poses a problem for nurses as they should need to examine one's culture and history to apply effective medical measures.
In some countries such as the USA, strategic measures on administration of opioids and drug addiction have been looked into. In the process of application, two methods are used, namely; the oral and transdermal method as there is needed to change routes. However, in some complicated situations such as the patient is unable to feed the parenteral routes are used. They ate also accompanied by medication-assisted treatments, voluntary monitoring systems as well as drug prescription monitoring programs. There is a big concern for nurses to diagnose the rate of addiction of opioids in patients in line with conditions such as terminal cancer and rheumatoid arthritis (Narayan, 2010). This will enable them to find out how the patients are able to manage it or express it the presence of others or alone; thus developing sound ideas to solve the problems.
References
Bednarz, H., Schim, S., & Doorenbos, A. (2010). Cultural diversity in nursing education: Perils, pitfalls, and pearls. Journal of Nursing Education , 49 (5), 253-260.
Lowe, J., & Archibald, C. (2009, January). Cultural diversity: The intention of nursing. In Nursing forum (Vol. 44, No. 1, pp. 11-18). Malden, USA: Blackwell Publishing Inc.
Narayan, M. C. (2010). Culture's effects on pain assessment and management. AJN The American Journal of Nursing , 110 (4), 38-47.
