In the present day healthcare environment, cultural competence is regarded to be one of the key factors that determine the effectiveness or success attained in offering services to clients. Essentially, as society becomes more diversified, healthcare professionals are progressively interacting with individuals from different backgrounds who view life from different perspectives. This increased diversity in society presents numerous opportunities and challenges for healthcare providers to create an environment that guarantees the delivery of culturally competent care. Cultural competence is specifically described as the capacity of providers and healthcare institutions to successfully offer healthcare services that fulfill the entirety of patient needs from a social, cultural, and linguistic perspective (Govere & Govere, 2016). While healthcare experts and institutions are recognizing the need for incorporating cultural competence in their services, most of them lack an awareness of the suitable approach through which the competence can be incorporated into their engagements. Benchmarking offers an appropriate methodology through which such entities can learn how to integrate competence into their activities.
Incorporating cultural competence in our organization is a problematic priority. Consequently, benchmarking of the John Hopkins health facility embodies a key intervention strategy to ascertain the suitable approaches of incorporating it. The practice has been noted to be particularly problematic evidence by the fact that the largest proportion of patients are and in a recent survey conducted within the regions, the minority groups indicated that our organization lacks the proper awareness concerning the issues affecting them in order to offer culturally competent care. Competence within the benchmarking process was measured in the confines of three primary levels of the organization structure, which include: individual caregivers, the provider network, and the administrative functions (Govere & Govere, 2016). Key indicators measures were plans and policies, services, needs assessment, outcomes, human resources, and information exchange. Fundamentally, while existing literature underscores the significance of the various approaches to effective cultural competence, there is still evidence indicating that there is a general lack of best practice approaches in our organization which is ascertained to be as a result of the lack of suitable guidance in key problematic aspects of the practices.
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One of the key aspects of cultural competence that was noted in the organization is related to the plans and policies that are applied within the facility. John Hopkins operates on a no discrimination framework, which asserts that the company is resolute in its decision that no form of discrimination should be reported within its walls (Edrees et al., 2016). Such an approach functions as an appeal to the culturally diverse population as they are guaranteed more consideration within the system. By having such a policy, the organization guarantees cultural competence due to the fact that the healthcare experts can be constantly exposed to a culturally diversified client base, thus acquiring a better sense of their culture (Edrees et al., 2016). The second key aspect of cultural competence is with regard to the services that are offered, which can also be classified as the care delivery and underlying mechanisms. Specifically, the organization has undertaken to ascertain the distinct needs of the individual cultures in order to offer better services to individuals. John Hopkins has established that specific cultures have distinct needs that characterize them, and therefore, there is a need to offer specialized attention to such individuals and develop approaches to their care since their needs are also distinct (Edrees et al., 2016). In addition to this, its services are also tailor-made to the different populations as a result avoiding a scenario of mismatch between granted services and the individuals receiving the care.
The third aspect of cultural competence that is evident in the organization is linked to the needs assessment aspect of their engagement. Cultural competence necessitates that an entity should constantly undertake to document its needs assessment in order to ascertain the sections that necessitate improvement. Continuous progress is the main goal of this undertaking since it ensures that the organization keeps up with the developments in the industry in its various dimensions (Govere & Govere, 2016). As the world is progressively changing, the related dynamics are also being altered, and there is a need for the associated entities to be aligned with the changes and uphold relevance. Human resources is also another key aspect that the organization has undertaken to enhance in order to guarantee that the department is constantly monitoring the competence. Specifically, this dimension is concerned with the workforce diversity and training through which the involved leaders gather the necessary resources for the training of the staff members in the different aspects of competence (Lin, Lee & Huang, 2017). In addition to this, the human resources department also ensures that the organization undertakes community engagement, which essentially entails collaborating with the different key entities in the communities in order to ascertain their needs and demands (Edrees et al., 2016). The fifth aspect that is evident in the organization is information exchange, which is, intrinsically, concerned with patient-provider communication (Edrees et al., 2016). The approach through which the patients and healthcare providers exchange information is crucial as it aids in gauging whether appropriate user information is acquired as well as the manner in which the providers understand the various tenets.
Benchmarking, in this case, can have a considerable impact on the quality of services offered since it can aid in ascertaining the aspects of an organization that are most problematic and expedites their modification. One of the key aspects that have been noted to be problematic includes the fact that our organization does not undertake suitable employee training on the delivery of competent care. The workforce embodies the primary point of contact between the company and clients and for that reason, by offering suitable training to these individuals, there is a greater possibility of promoting competence in the organization since the training will function as a guide for the workers (Lin, Lee & Huang, 2017). Additionally, our organization can also develop policies that seek to outlaw discriminatory practices when offering services to the diversified population. In line with this, such policies can also necessitate community engagement from the various departments. Quintessentially, cultural competence is a construct meant to be implemented by all the stakeholders in the hospital setting, and it is important for policies to be enacted mandating for such measures to be taken in order to augment general competence (Lin, Lee & Huang, 2017). After the implementation of these practices as revealed by the benchmarking, the outcomes can be measured by undertaking surveys within the community being served. In addition to this, outcomes can also be measured by recording the diversity of the patients that are treated through the hospital system and report satisfaction with the manner in which care is offered to them.
References
Edrees, H., Connors, C., Paine, L., Norvell, M., Taylor, H., & Wu, A. W. (2016). Implementing the RISE second victim support programme at the Johns Hopkins Hospital: a case study. BMJ open , 6 (9), e011708.
Govere, L., & Govere, E. M. (2016). How effective is cultural competence training of healthcare providers on improving patient satisfaction of minority groups? A systematic review of literature. Worldviews on Evidence‐Based Nursing , 13 (6), 402-410.
Lin, C. J., Lee, C. K., & Huang, M. C. (2017). Cultural competence of healthcare providers: A systematic review of assessment instruments. Journal of Nursing Research , 25 (3), 174-186.
