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Cultural Competency in Healthcare: Guide Home

What Is Cultural Competency?

  1. The ability to provide care to patients with diverse values, beliefs, and behaviors while tailoring health care delivery to meet patients' cultural and linguistic needs.

  2. The ability to collaborate with individuals from different cultures.

  3. A set of behaviors, attitudes, and policies that enable a system, agency, or group of professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations.

  4. Acknowledging and incorporating the importance of culture, the assessment of cross-cultural relations, vigilance towards the dynamics that result from cultural differences, the expansion of cultural knowledge, and the adaptation of services to culturally unique needs.

  5. Appropriate and effective communication which requires the willingness to listen to and learn from members of diverse cultures, and the provision of services and information in appropriate languages, at appropriate comprehension and literacy levels, and in the context of an individual's cultural health beliefs and practices.

Chin, J. L. (2000). Culturally Competent Health Care. Public Health Reports115(1), 25.

Nair, L., & Adetayo, O. A. (2019). Cultural Competence and Ethnic Diversity in Healthcare. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery - Global Open7(5), e2219. https://doi.org/10.1097/GOX.0000000000002219

Why Is Cultural Competency Important?

  1. Minorities have been shown to have decreased access to preventive care and treatment for chronic conditions which results in increased emergency room visits, graver health outcomes, and increased likelihood of developing various diseases.

  2. Culturally competent healthcare organizations are in a position to greatly reduce racial and ethnic disparities.

  3. Health is determined by many factors outside the traditional healthcare setting, including housing quality, access to healthy food, and education.

  4. Low-income immigrants and refugees from ethnic minority groups typically delay entry into care, under-utilize services, and/or overutilize emergency room services because of language, cultural, and financial barriers.

  5. Every member of the population should have equal access to healthcare.

Chin, J. L. (2000). Culturally Competent Health Care. Public Health Reports115(1), 25.

Nair, L., & Adetayo, O. A. (2019). Cultural Competence and Ethnic Diversity in Healthcare. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery - Global Open7(5), e2219. https://doi.org/10.1097/GOX.0000000000002219

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