ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies some of the key elements of cultural awareness, and describes how it can be developed in everyday life and in nursing practice. In order to offer the best care to patients from diverse cultures and subcultures, we need to develop cultural awareness. Elements of cultural awareness are information, empathy, open-mindedness, interest in others, willingness to learn from others, lack of prejudice. In learning to empathise and understand what it might be like to be that person is an excellent way of developing and enhancing cultural awareness. To engage in culturally sensitive nursing, people have to be prepared to learn about others. Transcultural nursing is essentially an amalgam of anthropology and nursing, and like many other nursing concepts, emerged from North America in around the late 1950s and early 1960s. Providing culturally appropriate nursing care is very challenging and will require a great deal of thought, caring concern and a willingness.
