Ethnicity refers to the recognition of an individual or a group of persons to a particular ethnic, racial, national, cultural group and adherence to their norms, values, beliefs, mores and idioms. Population in an area of service has diverse and pseudo-cultural groups therefore the practice of nursing profession requires professionals with high integrity to the general view of handling patients in the hospital without bias. Ethnicity has a greater influence and contribution to the health of patients. The ethnic group of a nurse will determine the way the patient will be treated.
Patients always develop a primary feeling of nervousness’, apprehension, resentment and fear when attended to by an unknown or strange nurse of another ethnical group (Anderson 1999). Psychological feeling of the patients also contributes to their level of stress and trauma with respect to who will attend to him. It is believed that when a nurse or a doctor of the same ethnic group attends to them, chances are that they will receive reliable treatment. Nursing profession is a challenging institution in terms of service delivery.
Other ethical issues are gender stereotyping, and discrimination have proved challenging. Nurses who are closely related to a particular ethical group tend to offer special services to that particular patient as compared other ethical group. The nurses are required to be multilingual hence communicate a language spoken by a large population at the region of service. According to John (2003), the attitudes of a professional nurse should be streamlined to follow the set-rules that promotes and represent nursing principles at all levels in the organization downplaying any ethical issues.
The development of understanding and practice of skills that appreciates different ethical backgrounds can be effected if training of the nurses is established in the organization.
REFERENCES
Anderson, M. (1999), “Health Care Across Cultures” Nursing Outlook. New York: Routledge, pp. 56-63. John, M. (2003). Ethnicity in Professional Practices. London: Sage, pp. 178-211. Moore, J. (1998). Ethical Related Issues in Nursing. New York: McMillan, pp. 23-31.