An Analysis of Cultural and Linguistic Competency in Case Management

This essay delves into the critical importance of cultural and linguistic competency within the realm of case management, particularly in the Australian healthcare context. It defines cultural and linguistic competence as the ability to demonstrate awareness and sensitivity towards diverse beliefs and values, ensuring effective communication between patients and care providers. The essay explores the existing literature on the topic, highlighting the significance of cross-cultural and linguistic skills in various healthcare fields, including nursing, medicine, and social work. It examines the evolution of cultural competence, its integration into caregiving models, and its alignment with person-centered care approaches. The essay analyzes strategies for competence development, emphasizing the need for individualized awareness and the reduction of potential biases. It concludes that cultural and linguistic awareness is essential for promoting quality care in diverse case scenarios and for addressing disparities in service provision. The document also provides reflection on cross-cultural service provision and its significance.

RUNNING HEAD: Cultural and linguistic competency on case management
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Cultural and linguistic competency on case management
CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC COMPETENCY ON CASE
MANAGEMENT
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Cultural and linguistic competency on case management
Introduction
Cultural and linguistic competence can be defined as the capability to demonstrate awareness
towards diverse beliefs, feelings and values while providing care. This protocol involves due consideration
of individual cultural, linguistic and social needs of the cases to ensure effective communication between
patients and care providers. The purpose behind cultural and linguistic competence in health and social
caregiving is to decrease disparities in providing quality service to patients irrespective of gender, race,
native languages or ethnicity. The thesis statement of this essay is to understand the significance of
cultural and linguistic competency in providing optimum services in health and social care fields. The
present study demonstrates a literature analysis of the aforementioned competence. The significance of
cross-linguistic and cultural competence is widely experienced in the fields of nursing, medicine, mental
health, allied health, pharmacy, social work, and other public health areas. Cultural competence was
introduced by Terry Cross in 1989 and was later introduced in mainstream caregiving to develop wider skill
sets and embed them in medical curriculum.
Literature analysis
The increase in diverse needs of the Australian population provides a preference for competence in
cultural and linguistic competence. Patients from specific communities, such as the older adults may retain
to spend a majority of their days in their home atmosphere. However, Almutairi et al. (2015) comment
development of cognitive systems to support members from all community has been considered vital from
the eve of care generation. Jeffreys (2015) estimates there are approximately 200 000 informal caregivers
across Australia. Recognition of the requirement of burden relief on the carers has led to the formation of
appropriate guidelines from Home and Community Care services. Llorente (2018) comments these
guidelines assist the development of cross cultural and linguistic activities in the daily living. Support
models are implemented in Australian communities to aid people from different backgrounds to cooperate in
their present living conditions. As stated by Goeman et al. (2016), culturally and linguistically sensitive
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Cultural and linguistic competency on case management
social care includes the capacity to be aware of the circumstances of the patient and their distinctive cultural
and linguistic heritage.
This awareness must be generated in a way that is essential to meet the expectations and needs of the
clients. Contemporary caregiving aims to refine and establish a linguistically and culturally sensitive model
to support implementation of caregiving roles. The concepts of linguistic and cultural competence can be
associated to person centeredness in the social and healthcare contexts. The approaches of improving quality
of healthcare has been extensively promoted in the recent years through Health Care Act 2008. Llorente
(2018) explores evolution of linguistic and cultural competence in consideration to person centered
caregiving. This has helped shed light on early theoretical paradigms of competence development and their
significance on person centeredness. The outcomes have been in agreement with the study of Weech-
Maldonado et al. (2018), who focused on the interaction of care providers and their clients on basis of
interpersonal competence development. The linguistic models have been further expanded to demonstrate
the needs of patients while treatment or caregiving.
The study of Steinberg et al. (2016) compares various competence models in terms of cultural, ethnic
and linguistic efficiencies to demonstrate that a holistic approach is critical to observe the said skill. The
researchers in all three of these studies have identified that competencies are generated from diverse foci
that are resultant of needs-based situations of the cases. However, person-centred approaches towards
linguistic competency is promising to improve healthcare quality for individual communities, populations
and patients (Parker et al. 2017). Care competence with respect to various cultures are essential approaches
for enhancing delivery of care. Enhancements in popularity and recognition can consider ambiguity for
definition of evolution to use in multiple care settings. Components of cultural care are often derivatives of
racial and ethnic awareness of the carer. Mobula et al. (2015) present ideal for cultural competence and
strategies for their development in terms of active communication and interpersonal skill upgradation. The
discussion of implications of these strategies to improve healthcare quality have been considered in terms of
health system tiers.
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Cultural and linguistic competency on case management
As stated by Tucker et al. (2015), development of cultural efficiency in caregiving has gained
prominence since the 1990s. The researchers found during this time more than 1,000 guidelines or published
articles have the term “cultural competence” in them. This has been further strengthened by the study of
Adepoju et al. (2015), who addresses programs of cultural competencies that are published in national health
and social standards for Australian commonwealth. Furthermore, mandates for increasing cultural efficiency
of case managers can prove to have a primary impetus to provide holistic services to the patients.
Comprehensive demonstration and publicity that surrounds widespread ethnic and racial disparities in the
service provision can be lowered by cultural competence principles (Mobula et al. 2015). Multiple
guidelines and frameworks have been proposed to aid Australian service providers to consider the cultural
and linguistic context of clients prior to conduction of primary assessments. Parker et al. (2017) state these
models have acknowledged the widespread awareness for diverse ethnic traditions and increased familiarity
of carers with the holistic perspectives of service provision.
The case managers may encounter impractical clinical practice in certain areas of spiritual or
cognitive care (Betancourt et al. 2016). However, patients must be viewed as areas of cultural or ethnic
groups to understand them better. In contrary to this, Almutairi et al. (2015) argue individualised awareness
is also essential for unique perspectives and experiences that can reduce stereotyping of cases. In accordance
to this observation, Dabney et al. (2016) note about 13.64% of carers can formulate an inappropriate
assumptions about the beliefs and expectations of clients. In order to reduce these concerns, strategies for
competence development in areas of language and culture has been widely promoted. According to
Betancourt et al. (2016), cultural healthcare can help to incorporate a well-balanced social caregiving
approach for various cultural and ethnic groups based on their individual and collaborative needs. The
hindrances that can be encountered in providing a competence based clinical practice can be in terms of time
and budget constraints.
Generic skills for competence development is largely influenced by patient legitimacy in their own
beliefs of health and social care. These beliefs can aid in recognition of effective delivery of health and
social care. Dabney et al. (2016) argue the paradigms can shift from the perspective of accepting patient
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Cultural and linguistic competency on case management
feedback to considering a variant of the approach to provide necessary care. Demonstration of explanation
for a prominent social issue can be motivated by the perceived causes and carers comprehension of it.
Weech-Maldonado et al. (2018) recommends negotiation of due understanding about the issue and
appropriate care services can reduce the designated hindrances and provide effective care plans. In addition
to the efficacy, the plans must also be mutually agreeable for the patient and their families. In this case,
individualized strategy for cultural and linguistic competence can be considered to develop the caregiving
plan from patient perspective (Adepoju et al. 2015). Strategies of linguistic competence has been noted in
the previous formulations of health care legislation in Queensland and New South Wales.
Reflection
Cross-cultural service provision state the significance of recognition of both clients and the providers
through diverse perspectives of traditions and cultural inclinations. encourage care providers to explore and
acknowledge own ethnic and racial influences that can enrich their training for holistic service provisions.
As per my understanding, both linguistic and cultural competence aim to enhance the quality of
understanding and care provided by the service individuals. The benefits obtained from the competence
models are seen in areas of equality balance to enhance equality in care and reduce bias. It is my opinion
that specific care strategies for ethnic communities such as the Indigenous Australians from Aboriginals and
Torres Strait Islanders groups must be elaborated. Additionally, I believe collaborative improvement in care
can however be hindered by competency approaches owing to heavy budget and exhaustive procedures. The
significance of these models is emphasised by various scholarly sources in areas of quality and care and case
comprehension.
Conclusion
Based on the analysis of published literature, it can be concluded that competence for diverse
languages and cultures are essential to obtain a thorough understanding of case scenarios. The demonstrated
models of linguistic and cultural competence are inclined with the commitments for person centered care.
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Cultural and linguistic competency on case management
The reviews of multiple scholarly articles have shed light on the prominence of competence-based care
among Australian communities. Potential issues can be identified through a group-based assessment of
the service receivers. The resurgence of competence based approaches in public and social health can gather
a diverse need for momentum and attention in previous decades. However, the researchers have contradicted
one another while emphasising the beneficial aspects of care quality. Primary benefit of competence
development is that it individualises quality care for each case and complement the expectation of the clients
from focus of quality movement. The focus on performance measures and process benchmarks to emphasis
on interpersonal associations between consumer services. A limitation of competence to enhance quality for
case understandings. Overall, linguistic and cultural awareness is essential to promote quality care for the
diverse case scenarios.
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Cultural and linguistic competency on case management
References
Goeman, D., King, J., & Koch, S. (2016). Development of a model of dementia support and pathway for
culturally and linguistically diverse communities using co-creation and participatory action research.
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Weech-Maldonado, R., Dreachslin, J. L., Epané, J. P., Gail, J., Gupta, S., & Wainio, J. A. (2018). Hospital
cultural competency as a systematic organizational intervention: Key findings from the national
center for healthcare leadership diversity demonstration project. Health care management review,
43(1), 30-41.
Dabney, K., McClarin, L., Romano, E., Fitzgerald, D., Bayne, L., Oceanic, P., ... & Holmes, L. (2016).
Cultural competence in pediatrics: Health care provider knowledge, awareness, and skills.
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Betancourt, J. R., Green, A. R., Carrillo, J. E., & Owusu Ananeh-Firempong, I. I. (2016). Defining cultural
competence: a practical framework for addressing racial/ethnic disparities in health and health care.
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Almutairi, A. F., McCarthy, A., & Gardner, G. E. (2015). Understanding cultural competence in a
multicultural nursing workforce: Registered nurses’ experience in Saudi Arabia. Journal of
Transcultural Nursing, 26(1), 16-23.
Tucker, C. M., Arthur, T. M., Roncoroni, J., Wall, W., & Sanchez, J. (2015). Patient-centered, culturally
sensitive health care. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, 9(1), 63-77.
Adepoju, O. E., Preston, M. A., & Gonzales, G. (2015). Health care disparities in the post–Affordable Care
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Parker, M. M., Fernández, A., Moffet, H. H., Grant, R. W., Torreblanca, A., & Karter, A. J. (2017).
Association of patient-physician language concordance and glycemic control for limited–English
proficiency Latinos with type 2 diabetes. JAMA internal medicine, 177(3), 380-387.
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Steinberg, E. M., Valenzuela-Araujo, D., Zickafoose, J. S., Kieffer, E., & DeCamp, L. R. (2016). The
“battle” of managing language barriers in health care. Clinical pediatrics, 55(14), 1318-1327.
Mobula, L. M., Okoye, M. T., Boulware, L. E., Carson, K. A., Marsteller, J. A., & Cooper, L. A. (2015).
Cultural competence and perceptions of community health workers’ effectiveness for reducing health
care disparities. Journal of primary care & community health, 6(1), 10-15.
Llorente, M. (Ed.). (2018). Culture, Heritage, and Diversity in Older Adult Mental Health Care. New York,
US: American Psychiatric Pub.
Jeffreys, M. R. (2015). Teaching cultural competence in nursing and health care: Inquiry, action, and
innovation. Berlin, Germany: Springer Publishing Company.
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