Assessing and Diagnosing Patients With Substance-Related and Addictive Disorders An important consideration when working with patients is their cultural background. Understanding an individual’s culture and personal experiences provides insight into who the person is and where he or she may progress in the future. Culture helps to establish a sense of identity, as well as to set values, behaviors, and purpose for individuals within a society. Culture may also contribute to a divide between specific interpretations of cultural behavior and societal norms. What one culture may deem as appropriate another culture may find inappropriate. As a result, it is important for advanced practice nurses to remain aware of cultural considerations and interpretations of behavior for diagnosis, especially with reference to substance-related disorders. At the same time, PMHNPs must balance their professional and legal responsibilities for assessment and diagnosis with such cultural considerations and interpretations
although initially anxious about the social interaction involved in this task I made great friends and cemented pre-existing friendships within the group which I will take away from this task. I have learned that despite being anxious the apprehension experienced when I first met my group members wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and I coped really well. This was the first time I have ever been group leader I have learned that I am good with organising people and delegating tasks. However I might be overly controlling and rigid. This comes down to having overly high expectations of myself and others. My slight perfectionist personality streak came out resulting from self-inflicted pressuring myself to come out of university with a good degree. I have also learned that I am not very good with coping with conflict, when there was conflicting ideas about how to present the presentation. This conflict which caused me to take a back seat as leader and to dissociate from the group I think this is due to prior childhood trauma. Other members of the group, because of different life experiences to mine, were comfortable and sat with the disagreement with some members thriving off it. Most of the group as a whole were anxious about the pentation although one member wasn’t because they are used to giving presentations.
Active experimentation: based on what I have learned from this experience in future team work (and If I am ever involved in a MDT) I will try and be less overbearing and controlling. This will be achieved by putting more trust in people and their ability to work effectively and letting them run with their own ideas instead of micromanaging them. This strategy was found to be effective in MDT team (Fay, Borrill, Amir, Haward & West, 2006). I will try not to retreat from conflict by engaging and contributing rather than avoiding and/or running away from it. I think as a non-confrontational pers