Nursing people from cultures other than one's own: A perspective from New Zealand
Deb Spence
Principal Lecturer, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand
PP: 222 - 231
Abstract
Nursing a person from another culture is a dynamic, complex and tension-filled phenomenon. It is also always culturally and historically situated. This paper provides an overview of the evolving meaning of 'culture' in New Zealand nursing. Then, drawing upon the findings of research that used hermeneutic phenomenology to explore the experience of nursing people from cultures other than one's own, a description of the constituent parts is of this phenomenon is briefly outlined and followed by an exemplar that describes the coalescent and contradictory nature of the phenomenon as a whole. As New Zealand nurses negotiate the conflicts essential for ongoing development of their practice, interplay of the notions of prejudice, paradox and possibility is evident at intra-personal and interpersonal levels as well as in relation to professional and other discourses.
Keywords
cultural difference, New Zealand nursing, hermeneutic research, cultural safety
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