Cultural Competency in Healthcare

This article discusses the challenges and best practices for cultural competency in healthcare. It explores the importance of diversity in the workforce and how it can improve service delivery. The article also highlights the barriers to workforce diversity in healthcare organizations.

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cultural competency in healthcare

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In many industries, business firms are being faced with various challenges in diversity
and there is an increment in diversity of cultures in the society due to the rising travelling and
communication of individuals. To act upon this barrier, business enterprises are integrating
diversity in their personnel. This is related with recruiting candidates from different regions
with diverse cultural practices and beliefs. Due to this approach, the business performance is
increased at a greater rate. The enterprise management is using this plan to increase
organisational performance and also make them competitive in the market.
In recruiting and retaining diverse workforce, the three best enterprise level practice
includes discovering new talent pools, making diversity part of the firm brand and seeing
beyond compliance. These three-practice enable organizations to apprentice diverse
personnel’s and retain them for a longer period of time. Making diversity part of a firm brand
will help the firm to signify to its consumers that certainly it is at the forefront in encouraging
diversity. It implies that the organisation is required to recruit and hire personnel from diverse
ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The organisation can also see beyond compliance when
recruiting candidates as this approach will lead to the organisation acknowledging diversity
more than fulfilling with affirmative action’s initiatives and filling quotas. It will help them in
recruiting and retaining a more diverse workforce. In the end, discovering new talent pools
will significantly promote recruitment and retaining more diverse labour force.
These are some of the best practices that can be adopted by the organisation while
hiring and retaining a diverse workforce as it will straightly influence the firm to be more
diverse in their operations and encourage diversity. As such, these practices can also be
incorporated into a healthcare firm and aid in enhancing service delivery to their users in the
market (Shen et al, 2009). Healthcare firms provide their services to diverse people in the
community from various ethnic and cultural groups. With adoption of these practices,
encouraging diversity will surely increase and improve service delivery of the firm to their
consumers.
It may be challenging in health care system while working with professionals from
diverse culture. For instance, some of the challenges may include – there may be confusion as
professionals may have different training on how to handle many situations and this may
impact negatively on service delivery. Some of the advanced medical equipment may be
unable used by the professionals and this may require them to undergo specific training. This
is both costly and time consuming. It will also negatively influence performance of healthcare

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organisation. Other than this, there may also be language barrier as the foreign professionals
may be unable to speak native country language of the enterprise (Hobby, 2008). Hence, all
these challenges can be marked as barriers to workforce diversity in an organisation.

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References
Hobby, F. (2008). Racial and ethnic disparities: Why diversity leadership matters. Journal of
Healthcare Management, 53(1), 8.
Shen, J., Chanda, A., D'netto, B., & Monga, M. (2009). Managing diversity through human
resource management: An international perspective and conceptual framework. The
International Journal of Human Resource Management, 20(2), 235-251.