Cultural Diversity, Spirituality & Sexuality in Patient Care

Vocabulary flashcards covering core concepts from the lecture on cultural diversity, spirituality, and sexuality in patient care.

Culture

A shared system of beliefs, values, and behavioral expectations that guides language, identity, body language, and everyday life.

Cultural Diversity

The coexistence of differing ethnic, racial, sexual-orientation, occupational, geographic, and social groups within a society.

Ethnicity

A sense of identification with a cultural group based on common heritage, behaviors, dialects, and religious practices.

Race

A classification based on physical characteristics; distinct from ethnicity and often misused interchangeably with it.

Ageism

Prejudice or discrimination directed at individuals purely because of their age.

Cultural Competence

The ability of health professionals to deliver care that respects and responds to patients’ diverse cultural beliefs and practices.

Transcultural Assessment

A systematic evaluation of a patient’s cultural influences on health, often using tools like the ESFT model.

ESFT Model

Framework assessing Explanatory model, Social/environmental factors, Fears/concerns, and Therapeutic contracting & collaboration.

Sex Roles

Culturally defined expectations about which sex holds dominance or specific family responsibilities.

Gender Norms

Socially constructed roles, expectations, and power dynamics assigned to genders.

Gender Identity

An individual’s internal sense of being male, female, both, neither, or somewhere along a spectrum.

Gender Expression

The external presentation of one’s gender through clothing, behavior, and mannerisms as perceived by others.

Biological Sex

Objectively measured organs, hormones, and chromosomes (e.g., XX female; XY male).

Sexuality

The way people experience and express themselves as sexual beings; shaped by culture, development, and environment.

Sexual Health

A state of physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being in relation to sexuality, not merely the absence of disease.

Delayed Ejaculation

A sexual dysfunction marked by the inability to ejaculate within an expected time frame.

Antihypertensives

Medications commonly known to interfere with sexual expression and functioning.

Spirituality

An individual’s search for meaning, purpose, connection, love, and forgiveness that may or may not involve religion.

Faith

Confidence or trust in something (deity, cosmos, universe, etc.) without objective evidence.

Religion

An organized system of beliefs, rituals, and practices related to a higher power.

Higher Power

Any entity or force (God, Universe, Mother Earth, etc.) that provides meaning beyond oneself.

Meaning and Purpose

A universal human need addressed in nursing to help patients interpret illness and suffering.

Love and Relatedness

The fundamental human need for connection that spiritual care seeks to support.

Forgiveness

The capacity to release resentment; vital to overall spiritual well-being.