The pursuit of cultural competence poses challenges for medical facilities. One significant obstacle is the limited awareness and understanding of diverse cultural backgrounds, which hinders effective communication and perpetuates stereotypes or biases. Additionally, healthcare providers often face time constraints and heavy workloads, compromising their ability to engage in culturally sensitive care. These challenges can result in the potential oversight of individual patient needs. Medical institutions must prioritize cultural competence training and education to address these issues to enhance awareness and understanding. Furthermore, organizational support in resource allocation and workload management is crucial to enable healthcare providers to deliver culturally competent care without compromising their time and attention to patient’s unique requirements.
Healthcare providers might assume things about people from diverse backgrounds because of their opinions or generalizations. Thinking this way can make healthcare providers judge unfairly, which makes the care not as good. According to (Narayan Gopalkrishnan, 2018), biases can also appear when people are unaware of different cultures and treat others differently based on their cultural, ethnic, or racial backgrounds. Implicit biases, past bad experiences, trouble communicating, and not understanding cultural expectations all play a part in biased relationships between providers and patients. These factors hinder trust, open communication, and shared decision-making, ultimately affecting health outcomes.
As (Jongen et al., 2018) posit, healthcare organizations can implement strategies to ensure cultural competence among employees. Cultural competency training programs promote understanding and sensitivity, equipping providers with the necessary skills for culturally appropriate care. Using interpreters or cultural liaisons helps people communicate better. Healthcare delivery gets better when policies focus on being sensitive to different cultures.
In conclusion, medical facilities need help becoming culturally competent, including gaps in knowledge, assuming things, and having biased relationships between providers and patients. To overcome these obstacles, healthcare organizations should allocate funds for cultural competency training, increase the variety of their workforce, and enforce policies that promote cultural sensitivity. When providers do these things, they can bring cultures together, help patients recover well, and ensure fairness in healthcare.
Response to Classmate
Your suggestion about cultural competency training programs for healthcare providers is significant. Professionals need the proper knowledge and skills to give culturally sensitive care, making these programs valuable. Promoting cultural awareness and understanding helps overcome assumptions and biases, fostering effective communication and trust with diverse patients. Incorporating interpreters or cultural liaisons can significantly enhance communication and patient-provider relationships. These strategies match the goal of reaching cultural competence in healthcare delivery.
However, what if healthcare organizations do more than just training programs? What if they also include cultural competency in professional development? Providers can keep up with changing cultural dynamics and provide culturally competent care by continuously learning and evaluating. Furthermore, going by (Feyes, 2018) suggestions, promoting diversity in the workforce fosters cultural competence by bringing together professionals from diverse backgrounds and contributing unique perspectives and experiences. As such, I appreciate your insights on this topic and believe that your suggestions, along with ongoing education and diversity promotion, can significantly enhance cultural competence within healthcare organizations.
References
Feyes, E. (2018, July). Leadership and the Promotion of Diversity in the Work Force and Beyond. Pressbooks.pub; The Ohio State University. https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/pubhhmp6615/chapter/leadership-and-the-promotion-of-diversity-in-the-work-force-and-beyond/
Jongen, C., McCalman, J., & Bainbridge, R. (2018). Health workforce cultural competency interventions: a systematic scoping review. 18(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-018-3001-5
Narayan Gopalkrishnan. (2018). Cultural Diversity and Mental Health: Considerations for Policy and Practice. 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2018.00179
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