The Lion's Pride Lion's Pride Volume 12 (Spring 2019) | Page 41

The ethical issue of keeping patients safe from harm while
maintaining their cultural identity and adjusting to the patients’ cultural
practices is beginning to gain recognition as the population becomes
more diverse. Both the Institute of Medicine and American Pain Society
have conducted reports and found that minority group members, when
compared to whites, had poorer outcomes with more pain (Narayan,
2010). Patients from different cultures interpret pain differently and use
a wide array of different terms to describe pain. This is because culture
strongly influences the individual’s perception of pain within multiple
dimensions, including psychological, social, spiritual, and physical
dimensions (Narayan, 2010). Managing and treating a patient’s pain
becomes more complicated for nurses in a multicultural country like
America.
It is important for nurses to be aware of some of the major factors
resulting in suboptimal pain outcomes when caring for their patients.
Patients who are not fluent in English may not give a thorough and
accurate pain assessment and need further questioning, with rewording
of the questions. A patient’s nonverbal communication needs to be
assessed carefully, as well; the nurse may misread a patient’s signs of
pain. The use of various pain assessment tools does not work for every
patient, and nurses cannot assume patients comprehend the numbers,
pictures, etc. used to rank their pain level. For many patients, to admit