Cultural Competence in Healthcare: Importance, Strategies, and Benefits

Cultural competence is crucial in healthcare to provide respectful care that aligns with patients' cultural perspectives. It is a concern in present day due to lower quality patient-physician interactions among non-white patients. Nursing professionals in the UK can develop their cultural competency by developing awareness, willingness, and respect for cultural differences. Healthcare centers can undertake strategies like recruitment of minority staff, provision of interpreter services, and training for cultural awareness. Culturally competent care can lead to mutual respect, trust, and empowerment, reducing medical errors and health disparities.

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Definition:
Cultural competence can be defined as the ability of
the healthcare providers and the organizations to
understand the traditions, perceptions and inhibitions
of different service users coming from different
backgrounds and provide them respectful care that
aligns with their cultural perspectives.
Source: (Gone 2015)
Goal:
The main motive of the culturally competent
healthcare services would be to ensure the bestt
quality of care to each service users of cultural
background, English proficiency or literacy race,
ethnicity, by the health care providers working
with people from ethnic minority
Source:(Betancourt et al. 2016).
Benefits of culturally competent competence:
•Development of the mutual respect between the
patients and the healthcare workers, increase in the
trust as well as the promotion of empowerment in
the healthcare centers
• When patients feel heard, respected and culturally
understood by the healthcare providers, they are
more likely to participate effectively in preventive
healthcare services, healthcare planning and are
less likely to miss appointments (Betancourt et al.
2016).
•This can result in reduction of the medical errors and
are more likely to reduce legal costs for healthcare
facilities, helping to improve patient outcomes.
•Culturally competent healthcare services can help in
reduction of the health disparities faced by culturally
Bibliography
(P16230108 )Betancourt, J.R., Green, A.R., Carrillo, J.E. and Owusu
Ananeh-Firempong, I.I., 2016. Defining cultural competence:
a practical framework for addressing racial/ethnic disparities
in health and health care. Public health reports.
Gallagher, R.W. and Polanin, J.R., 2015. A meta-analysis of
educational interventions designed to enhance cultural
competence in professional nurses and nursing
students. Nurse Education Today, 35(2), pp.333-340.
Gone, J.P., 2015. Reconciling evidence-based practice and
cultural competence in mental health services: Introduction to
a special issue. Transcultural psychiatry, 52(2), pp.139-149.
Shen, Z., 2015. Cultural competence models and cultural
competence assessment instruments in nursing: a literature
review. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 26(3), pp.308-321.
Why it is a concern in present day?
•African Americans, other ethnic minorities report fewer
partnerships with the professionals as well as less
participation in the medical decisions and even lower levels
of satisfaction with the care.
•Moreover, data shows that the quality-physician interactions
are lower among the non-white patients particularly among
the Asians British, migrants and many others.
•Lower quality patient-physician interactions are seen to be
associated with the overall satisfaction of healthcare services
that diverse group of people receive (Shen 2015).
•Culturally insensitive care can also impact respect and
dignity of the people making them develop depression as
well.
Source: Gallagher and Polanin 2015)
Strategies that healthcare centers need to undertake to
develop a culturally competent organizational culture:
Strategies by which healthcare services and healthcare
professionals can be made more culturally competent are as
follows:
•Recruitment and retention of the minority staffs in the
healthcare organizations
•Provision of thee interpreter services
•Provision of training so that there can be increase in the
cultural awareness, skills as well as knowledge
•Effective coordination with the traditional healers
•Using community health workers in decision making and
care planning
•Effective incorporation of the culture-specific attitudes and
the different values into health promotion tools
•Inclusion of the families and community members in the
different decision makings in healthcare services
•Development of healthcare services in remote areas so that
people can all geographical areas can easily get access to
culturally competent care (Gallagher and Polanin 2015)
•Provision of the scopes of linguistic competency that should
extend beyond the clinical encounters to the different
appointment desk, advice lines, medical billing and even
other written materials
Procedures by which nursing professionals in
UK can develop their cultural competency:
•Developing awareness of the various influences
that the socio-cultural factors have on different
patients, clinicians and the clinical relationships
•Development of willingness for making clinical
settings more accessible towards patients
•Acceptance by the professionals that they have
the responsibility in understanding the cultural
aspects of health and wellness (Gone 2015)
•Effective recognition of the personal biasness
against people coming from the diverse cultures
•Proper respect and open-mindedness for the
cultural differences
•Effectively accept the liability for combating racism
as well as classism, homophobia, sexism, ageism
and different types of biases, stigmatization and
even discrimination that take place in the
healthcare settings
Source: Shen 2015