Cultural Competency Analysis

After reading Dr. Galanti 's articles about culturally competent healthcare please answer the following questions:

Ahmed, S., Wilson, K., Henricksen, R., & Jones, J. (2011). What Does It Mean to Be a Culturally-Competent Counselor? Journal for Social Action in Counseling and Psychology, 3(1), 17-28. Retrieved from http://www.psysr.org/jsacp/ahmed-v3n1-11_17-28.pdf

America is filled with increasing diversity, though this may bring an abundance of possibilities through interacting with other ethnic groups, it also comes with many problems. These problems are particularly for those who are in the health care system whether you are a health care provider, social worker or nurse. The challenge at hand is about cultural competence. Cultural competence is the ability to adequately provide the linguistic and ethical needs of your patient. (Horevitz et al) (2013) Explore the many benefits of cultural competence and how the health care system can alleviate many problem such as disparities when they have cultural awareness. A way that providers can overcome cultural barriers is by simply become knowledgeable about the cultural group the patient belongs to. When a health care system requires for their members to learn about the values, beliefs and history of several cultures they will not only have an appreciation and respect for those cultures, but have awareness of how important it is to have cultural competence. (Horevitz et al) (2013) Koreans originally immigrated to the United States and settled in Hawaii. They soon traveled elsewhere because of harsh work conditions.The moved to other cities, establishing businesses and decent lives for themselves in the United States.Like

“Why is it crucial as a student to learn about cultural competency”? The reason is due to the increasing cultural diversity in the United States. This increasing cultural diversity in the United States has resulted in the national health objective proposed in Healthy People 2020: achieving the highest level of health for all people by addressing societal inequalities and “historical and contemporary injustices” (Giddens, 2013, pp. 33). The belief is that all people deserve quality health care and access to care no matter what culture the individual may be. Giddens states that culturally competent care means conveying acceptance of the patient’s health beliefs while sharing information, encouraging self- efficiency, and strengthening the patient’s

The article that I chose is Improving Cultural Competence to Reduce Health Disparities for priority Populations. This topic is relevant to social work because it is talking about cultural competence in the health care system and the one major skill that social workers need is cultural competency. This article is also relevant to social work because it talks about the importance of cultural competence in reducing disparities through culturally sensitive and unbiased quality care and since the social work field is all about treating everyone equally and fairly, this article falls right under its relevance. It continues to talk about programs to improve the knowledge of providers on cultural competency and general approaches that have been utilized in creating educational interventions to address cultural competence. This is great because social workers are never done learning, it is always important to train social worker on how to be culturally competent, specially because the populations being served are very diverse therefore, there should always be a way to train service providers on how to have cultural awareness.

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.

One of the most integral parts of cultural competency is the process of successfully becoming culturally competent. After synthesizing available research on the topic I have constructed four main steps in becoming culturally competent. Those include self-awareness, understanding various aspects of the culturally diverse population for whom you care for, practice evidence based medicine as it relates to culturally diverse populations and continuing education (Kodjo, 2009; Purnell, 2012).

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

Cultural competence is “the ability to communicate with, understand and effectively interact with people across cultures” (EYLF, 2015)

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”

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

Cultural competence affects the patient and healthcare professional positively. Healthcare professionals can gain knowledge and skills to tailor to a patient’s satisfaction. A study by Soulé (2014), identified awareness, engagement, and application as the fundamental components of cultural competence in a health care workforce and health care system. Awareness can be likened to mindfulness of self and others. A health professional should understand their own culture, such as their naturally occurring stereotypes. Health care workers should be able to accept different cultural beliefs to create an understanding work environment. A healthcare workforce can achieve cultural competence by accepting new information and knowledge and having the ability to respect different perspectives. Engagement can be demonstrated through the intention to engage leading to the process of engagement and thus eliciting outcomes such as empathy, where participants in Soulé’s (2014) study understood flexibility, such as listening not hearing and being a learner and a professional, was needed for communication. The application is the combination of knowledge and skills that aid a workforce to include, respond to and negotiate. Soulé’s (2014) study found this component was less developed than the others. To develop this element of cultural

The diversity in the United States continues to grow, increasing the demand of creating more cultural competent programs. Health outcomes are addressed by race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. In research. race and ethnicity are potential predictors for a particular outcome. There is need for more research studies in order to provide an understanding of the different needs among ethnic minority groups. An abundance of research studies aggregates health data of different origin groups such as Hispanics or Asian/Pacific Islanders. The method is used in order to offer a result of a large population that may have multiple subgroups. Therefore, some may argue that aggregating results provides a more feasible process in analyzing a large ethnic

Did you know that I appreciate your positive attitude and that reflects during class on how you approach other class mates and how you relate to their experiences. In regards of your post here I agree that Cultural Competencies are a set of beliefs that needs to be taught and passed on from an early age and preferable long before people are taking courses that relate to Human Services and working with different populations. While class room and work experiences are a great start I question if it is enough when a worker in this field goes home after 8 hours and relapses back into her or his own cultural experiences. While some of us experience other diversities and cultures during our practicum site it might also be effective to eat and sleep

According to the Rogers & Vismara article, while cultural factors may influence the course of detection, diagnosis, and treatment of autism spectrum disorders, child treatment programs for autism tend to lack cultural considerations. One strategy the authors mentioned to address this issue is to train researchers and service providers in cultural competence. What would be some of the essential components of effective cultural competency training that is uniquely catering to culturally diverse children with autism spectrum