When confronted by large family groups, reflect on 1) how this makes you feel, think and act and 2) how this is similar or different to your own family of origin. Identify how your own personal cultural orientation impacts on working with patients and their families within the critical care setting, particularly when their requests and activities may differ markedly from your own views
What will be an ideal response?
Suggested response: For families, having a family member seriously or critically ill is distressing and normally evokes strong needs to be with their loved one, especially those families whose sense of obligation to others is embedded in their cultural orientation. Indigenous people's beliefs, for example, connect them to others (and environment and other living things) and, hence, they have a strong sense of obligation to care for other people within their immediate and wider family groups. Therefore, it is not unusual for both immediate and wider family members to gather close to the patient within a critical care unit. Some critical care nurses may find this difficult to comprehend, especially if their own cultural orientation and family origins are nuclear-type families that are typical of the dominant cultural group. In such instances, nuclear families tend to focus on individual members and contain themselves to the immediate family members being involved in supporting a critically patient.
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