Global migration has occurred over the years and this has led to cultural diversity all over the world. It is vital for the healthcare givers to understand different cultures and on so, provide efficiency to the system.
Cultural sensitivity is the awareness of patient’s beliefs, values, attitudes and respecting their individual preferences (Purnell & Fenkl, 2019). Understanding the patient’s religion, as well as their social economic status tends to raise the healthcare system’s credibility. An example to this is that some patients are not well versed in speaking a foreign language. Rather than letting them strain, seeking a translator and acquiring the right information points that out that you trust and understand them. In some cultures, geriatric patients prefer being handled by older nurses and doctors, due to privacy. In such cases, seeking the appropriate methods develops trust in the system..
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Cultural competence is the ability of healthcare providers to demonstrate and meet the various cultural, social, linguistic as well as religious needs of difference patients ( Henderson et al., 2018) . Patients expect that most institutions are well equipped with various personnel to handle them differently; lack of this leads to frustration. An example is when a hospital hires healthcare providers of different ethnicity, races, religions, cultures and nationalities ( Betancourt, 2016). This way, the minority communities are cared for. Institutions can also offer relevant training workshops to healthcare givers such as nurses. Furthermore, the provision of feedback systems and monitoring of this data helps health care centers focus more on what to improve.
In the end, cultural sensitivity, focus on the awareness and understand of patient’s beliefs and cultures while cultural competence demonstrates the ability to implement the understanding. Both of these are requirements to ensure safe provision of healthcare.
References
Henderson, S., Horne, M., Hills, R., & Kendall, E. (2018). Cultural competence in healthcare in the community: a concept analysis. Health & social care in the community , 26 (4), 590-603.
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. Public health reports .
Purnell, L. D., & Fenkl, E. A. (2019). Transcultural diversity and health care. In Handbook for Culturally Competent Care (pp. 1-6). Springer, Cham.
