Introduction: Due to the growing economy, population diversity is significantly increasing and it is urging health care providers to understand and communicate with diverse cultural and ethnic populations. From here, the term cultural competency was originated and it’s defined as a” set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals and enables that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations”.(1)
Health care providers need to treat patients holistically with respect of their cultural values and traditions, which may interfere and sometimes complicate a recommended treatment, not to mention a significant disparities in oral and general health in these minorities of cultural population have been noticed.(2,3)
It is important to mention that perception of seeking professional care varies significantly among different ethnic and cultural groups resulting in poor oral health and negligence of seeking professional care. Therefore, health care quality and effectiveness require a thorough understanding of traditions, cultural values, attitude and background of the diverse cultural groups seeking dental care.(2)
Literature review:
…show more content…
The two cohort groups were given a similar questionnaire. The study found that eighty percent of UBC students and recent graduates have encountered culturally different groups than their own, fifty percent of the eighty percent admitted that their communication was not effective. The study reported that the overall self-perception of cultural competency is complex and multifaceted and implementing cultural competency topics with interactive teaching modalities into dental curricula was highly recommended by study
After taking the self-assessment survey for quality and culture, I would like to improve and understand how cultural competence can have a real impact on clinical outcomes. Taking from some of the questions I answered wrong, it make me wants to be cultural competent. There are a few questions I am surprised and shocked, that I answered them incorrectly. I do understand that with training, I will start to gain cultural competence but it will take consistent individual practice on my part to develop and maintain individual cultural competence. Cultural competence can lead to, health literacy, health equity, and fewer diagnostic errors, which might help the patient expand their choices and access high quality medical providers because patient
5. I have relatives who have only used south Asian home remedies any time they are sick. I’m sure they would prefer a doctor who would be familiar with these remedies and advise them accordingly when helping to treat them. This is just ONE EXAMPLE of the potential need to incorporate cultural competency into healthcare. Do you know anybody that would benefit from the any cultural competency efforts in healthcare?
Cultural competency can be described as the ability to interact with different cultures in a positive manner. Many cultural differences can become apparent in a number of situations. According to Fadiman, doctors have a moral duty to save lives even if they don’t agree with the values or beliefs of someone else’s culture (1997). This paper will address the topic of cultural competency, with a concentration on the importance of cultural competency in the medical field. It is hard to imagine how frustrating it may be to come across a patient that resists a professional’s opinion because they have solid beliefs or do not understand what doctors are attempting to convey.
Medical providers that have cultural competency will overall enhance the quality of care to a diverse group of patients. Having that cultural knowledge would help the medical provider make the patient feel comfortable ultimately increasing the chance for that patient to follow through or adhere to the medical provider's treatment plan. It would also allow the medical provider to help build a friendly nurturing relationship with all of his or her patients. Developing these friendly relationships with patients will help make the patient worry less about a difficult diagnosis and would give them hope that they could one day get better from it. When a medical provider is culturally competent they would know how to respond to certain medical scenarios
Creating value through collaboration has been a topic of concern over the last 50 years as the spending in health care has increased. The goal is to provide quality and affordability and because of past efforts, enrollment increased drastically while it created a shortage of providers. Integrating behavioral and medical health has not been properly addressed due to stigmas and lack of education. Behavior health is more common today and costly. In efforts to integrate and improve patient outcomes and provider experiences there are many ways to achieve this goal such as train medical providers, train behavioral practioniers and embed behavioral providers in primary care settings.
How can we become cultural competent? We can become cultural competent by first understanding our own culture and believes. Then we have to be aware that there are other people with different cultures and values, but that does not mean they are wrong. Finally, we need to treat other with respect regardless of our different point of views.
Perhaps the best first step, and simplest, in response to the lack of cultural competency is for physicians in health care settings to place greater emphasis on cultural sensitivity and awareness trainings to improve treatment for Hispanics. The emphasis on this solution is an important starting point that will help increase the effectiveness of future initiatives in health care. Emphasis on cultural sensitivity and awareness is most efficacious in resolving cultural competency because the solution is both practical and simple. By providing training programs within health care settings that specifically focus on cultural sensitivity and awareness, physicians will learn to respond effectively to their Hispanic patients’ needs that show knowledge of their cultural differences. “One-size-fits all” types of prevention and treatment models cannot be applied to Hispanic patients and expect beneficial outcomes, thus “the challenge is for physicians to move beyond their belief systems and values and expand their world views to validate how others function”
It trains health care providers to overcome cultural barriers like communication and language. Cultural competency has the potential to reduce inequities in access to health care services and improve the health status of cultural communities by reducing healthcare disparities. The goal of cultural competency is to provide health care to the community that is respectful of and responsive to the needs of diverse patients. It helps the health care provider to understand the needs of patients while seeking treatment. It helps to patient-provider to meet on common ground in the diagnosis and treatment plan of the disease.
Cultural Competency in general is related to the ability to serve people in an appropriate way where they feel respected. In health care this refers to comfortable treatments that meet the standards of the patient from any backgrounds with all their different ways of living. Health care is a very important matter to every culture with different beliefs, traits, linguistics, etc. As Tamu Nolfo, the certified prevention specialist states in the short video “What is cultural competence and why is it important?” , there is still a problem with inequality in the United States.
Examine how public health organizations and health care providers encourage their employees to gain “cultural competence” beyond being bilingual. First they need to enhance their employee’s self-awareness of attitudes they might have towards different racial and ethnic groups. Second they can improve the care that they give by simply increasing their knowledge about different cultural beliefs and practices. How those groups typical seek health care and the attitudes they have toward health care.
If nurses lack of understanding regarding community demographics and cultural differences, they can have unintentional bias, and stereotype patients due to a lack of awareness of the cultural demographics of the community they serve (Camphinha-Bacote, 2011). Cultural competence is the understanding of different cultures and how that impacts the provision of patient care. Cultural competence in nursing is defined as one willingness or the desire to understand a patient’s culture, the ability to learn about a defined cultures belief system, and to work effectively as a healthcare provider understanding the dynamics of the patient’s culture as it relates to their relationships and care (Kardong-Edgren et Al.,
The way a person thinks about health, “whether that is our ‘philosophy’, our ‘worldview’, our ‘framework’ influences what we do as individuals in practice,” as well as how we deliver the health service. These elements allow us to think about healthcare in our own culturally acceptable way, this isn’t always an acceptable way of delivering the service to people with views different to our own. Cultural competence is an approach that aids in influencing the service and the education of healthcare professionals. (Taylor, K., & Guerin, P., 2010). Cultural competence is defined as a knowledge and understanding of cultures, histories and contemporary realities and awareness of protocols, combined with the proficiency to engage and work effectively in a cultural context congruent to the expectations of the people of that culture.
Cultural competency: Indians Culture competency is defined as one has the knowledge, the abilities and the skill to deliver care congruent with the patient’s cultural beliefs and practices (Purnell, 2013). As a nurse or a health care provider, increasing ones consciousness of culture diversity improves the possibilities for health care practitioners to provide competent care (Purnell, 2013). Nurses and all health care providers should be aware of other cultures to provide the best care that they can for that individual. Developing a relationship with diverse cultural groups involves good interpersonal skills and the application of knowledge and techniques learned from the physical, biological, and social sciences as well as the humanities (Purnell, 2013). I am choosing to select the Indian culture for my first assignment.
Over the past four months, this course has been one of the most eye-opening experiences I have had during my first year of college. Although I have always realized the importance of being culturally competent in daily life, specifically healthcare, I was unaware of the many ways that cultural competence can be obtained. This class gave me the opportunity to view situations from a different perspective, especially through the weekly discussion boards and peer responses. Learning from classmate can teach more valuable lessons than listening to boring lectures or reading hundreds of pages in a textbook because it is easier to relate to experience rather than hypothetical situations. For example, one of the discussion boards asked us to detail
Beach, Saha, and Cooper (2006) concisely summarize the prominence of cultural competency in the following manner: “Both patient-centeredness and cultural competence aim to improve health care quality, but each emphasizes different aspects of quality. The primary goal of the patient-centeredness movement has been to provide individualized care and restore an emphasis on personal relationships. It aims to elevate quality for all patients. Alternatively, the primary aim of the cultural competence movement has been to increase health equity and reduce disparities by concentrating on people of color and other disadvantaged populations” (p. 7).