Fostering a supportive moral climate for health care providers: Toward cultural safety and equity

Abstract

In Western forms of health care delivery around the globe, research tells us that nurses experience excessive workloads as they face increasingly complex needs in the populations they serve, professional conflicts, and alienation from leadership in health care bureaucracies. These problems are practical and ethical as well as cultural. Cultural conflicts can arise when health care providers and the populations they serve come from diverse economic, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. The purpose in this paper is to draw from Almutairi’s research with health care teams in Saudi Arabia to show the complexity of culturally and morally laden interactions between health care providers and patients and their families. Then, I will argue for interventions that promote social justice and cultural safety for nurses, other health care providers, and the individuals, families, and communities they serve. This will include addressing international implications for nursing practice, leadership, policy and research.