Campus Location

Dallas Campus (Online)

Date of Award

5-2022

Document Type

DNP Project

Department

Nursing

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Tonya Sawyer-McGee

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Donna Atobajeun

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Sandra Cleveland

Abstract

Nurses provide patient care in clinics, hospitals, homes, churches, schools, communities, and military, as well as on emergency medical helicopters. When a nurse is assigned to care for a patient, the patient expects the nurse to be culturally competent, communicate effectively, and provide safe quality care. However, cultural incompetence is observed when nurses provide care for Deaf patients, but they are unfamiliar with Deaf culture. In addition, communication is a fundamental skill nurses learn in nursing school, but course content in nursing programs rarely touches on how to communicate effectively with Deaf patients. Of the approximately 325 million people in the United States, 28 million are Deaf, but unfortunately, nurses are unprepared to communicate with Deaf patients due to the lack of cultural competency training. Nurses want to lead in bridging the culture gap in communicating with the Deaf community. The aim of this project was to raise awareness in academia of the lack of cultural competency education for nurses regarding Deaf culture and improve nurses’ cultural competency to reduce health care disparities within the Deaf community. The utilization of Leininger’s theory of culture care diversity and Andrews and Boyle’s transcultural interprofessional practice model directly influences health care delivery to improve health disparities. A pre-/postsurvey was used to assess the XXXX nurses’ efficacy of Deaf culture and provided available resources to communicate with the Deaf patient. The small sample size was one of the limitations of this quasi-experimental study. Recommendations to improve cultural competency include (a) health care organizations providing training for staff on Deaf culture, (b) nursing schools offering Deaf culture as part of their curriculum, (c) ASL being recommended in nursing school curriculums. and (d) annual training on Deaf culture in hospitals, clinics, and academic settings. The DNP Essentials is the foundation to continue with evidence-based clinical interventions to improve health disparities in the Deaf community.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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