STANDARD IV: CULTURAL HEALTH PATTERNS
AND CARING PRACTICES
Rationale
The identification of caring and healing values, beliefs,
and practices used by individuals, families, or communities is
essential to guide health promotion, illness reduction, or opti-
mal living withdisability or death. Culture care refers to the
subjectively and objectively learned and transmitted values,
beliefs, and patterned lifeways that assist, support, facilitate,
or enable another individual or group to maintain their well-
being and health, to improve their human condition and
lifeways, or to deal withillness, handicaps, or death
(Leininger, 1991).
Process Criteria
a. The nurse synthesizes the information gathered into patterns
of health and caring.
b. The nurse confirms the patterns of health and caring that have
been gathered with an individual, family, or community.
c. Thenursedocumentsthehealthandcaringpatternsofanindi-
vidual, family, or community.
Outcome Criteria
Knowledge
• Knowledge of the nursing process,
• Knowledge of pattern recognition.
Beliefs and Values
• Valuing an individual's, family's, or community's perspec-
tive on caring and healing.
Skills
• Ability to use critical and creative thinking about nursing and
healing,
• Recording an individual's, family's, or community's patterns
of health accurately.