Lack of cultural awareness and failure to provide culturally competent care can negatively impact patients and result in inadequate nursing care. To be culturally competent, nurses must understand how a patient's cultural background influences their health beliefs and practices. They should also recognize how culture can affect communication and delivery of care. In the nurse's practice, they provided an example where they successfully communicated with a patient using a translator after an abortion, which is culturally stigmatized in the patient's culture. In another situation, a physician lacked cultural competence by disapproving of a patient's decision to first consult a traditional healer, as required by their culture, worsening the patient's condition.