Conceptions of community health nurses regarding low-income Black, Mexican American, and White families: Part 2.

Abstract

Using a descriptive survey design, an investigation of the accuracy of community health nurses' conceptions of low-income black, Mexican American, and white family lifestyles and health care patterns was conducted. It was hypothesized that there would be a difference in the health care delivery problems among low-income, ethnic-minority families identified by community health nurses. The data were collected by mail questionnaire from 224 randomly selected subjects. The respondents neither agreed nor disagreed with stereotypes of low-income black, Mexican American, and white families - they were indecisive. The participants did not identify significantly different problems in delivering nursing care to the three ethnic classes (p > .05). The findings suggest that community health nurses in the sampled population have inadequate knowledge of ethnic-class family life-styles, which could contribute to patient noncompliance with health care plans. Part 1 of this report described a participant-observation field study conducted with a public, voluntary visiting nurse service in Denver, Colorado. The study explored community health nurses' concepts of low-income black, Mexican-American, and white family life-styles; cultural systems of health beliefs and attitudes; and patterns of seeking health care. Qualitative analysis of data yielded five ethnic-class family patterns that were congruent with stereotypes found in the sociological literature. A majority of community health nurse informants in the exploratory study reported that ethnicity made a difference in their ability to help patients. Certain problems encountered by the community health nurses in delivering nursing care to patients were common to all three ethnic classes, whereas other problems were unique to one ethnic group.