Diversity is inevitable in healthcare service delivery. Healthcare providers interact and attend to different patients from different cultural backgrounds, ages, gender, ethnicities, and religions. Therefore, healthcare providers need to be conscious of the diverse factors associated with particular patients to ensure that every patient receives satisfactory healthcare services. Most healthcare providers operate on direct interaction with the patients, and one primary goal for health care providers is to provide quality, customer satisfactory health services; consequently, understanding every patient’s peculiarities and cultural factors will result in high-quality healthcare services provision. Understanding diversity in the healthcare set up will prompt a healthy environment that will facilitate efficient healthcare service delivery and shape the organizational behavior because diversity affects how healthcare services are delivered.
Impacts of Diverse Demographics on the Healthcare Industry
Diversity is the aspect of variations in beliefs and values based on a person’s cultural background, gender, religion, age, among other factors. Diversity tends to affect people’s interactions due to different beliefs and values that exist between different groups. Every individual must understand that people are different and have different beliefs toward certain things. Diversity can be a useful tool if it is well embraced in organizations, notably healthcare institutions because they are more likely to encounter patients from diverse backgrounds. The provision of high-quality healthcare service to all patients is the primary goal for healthcare entities. It is possible to achieve this goal by embracing and valuing diversity.
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The Healthcare industry is prone to encounter noticeable effects prompted by diverse demographics due to its service delivery nature. Demographic diversity may be present within the organization's management level or between healthcare providers and the patient. Either way, the patient tends to be the primary victim when healthcare providers and management do not value and respect diversity in a healthcare facility. For instance, a manager from a minority group in an organization that does not value diversity may be viewed as an outsider; therefore, he might not be involved in various decision-making processes. As a result, he might not state his ideas that may improve patients care. Regard for diversity improves patient care. For instance, incorporating a diverse workforce in a healthcare institution will ensure that the employees exchange ideas on values and beliefs associated with different groups. Therefore, everyone will have a profound understanding of interacting with patients and other employees from diverse groups.
Cultural practices diversity affects the provision of healthcare service delivery. It is significant to acknowledge that healthcare institutions operate in a diverse environment. In most cases, healthcare providers will attend to patients with diverse cultural beliefs, which may hinder effective healthcare services. For instance, some cultures have alternative traditional remedies that could adversely affect the victim when combined with pharmaceutical drugs. Healthcare providers need to understand their patient's cultural practices to ensure the provision of quality healthcare services.
Additionally, religion and spirituality affect the healthcare industry as some religions like Buddhism prioritize mindful awareness, and, in most cases, they do not seek pharmacological pain management options. The health care providers should strive to understand and value the spiritual beliefs of the patients. Furthermore, gender also affects the healthcare industry because some patients may not feel comfortable being treated by the opposite gender. As a result, they may refrain from seeking medical care if the opposite gender attends to them. It is paramount for healthcare providers to continuously assess his/her clients' needs, values, and beliefs.
Cultural Competence Impact on Organizational Behavior
Cultural competence is the ability to acknowledge the diverse cultural differences between people and employees within an organization and effectively interact without barriers prompted by diverse cultural beliefs. Cultural competence ensures that employees interact and work toward the organization's goal without disputes caused by cultural variations. It shapes the organizational behavior and makes it accommodative to people from different cultural backgrounds. In the healthcare set up, cultural competence is the act of being open-minded and giving respect to people from a different cultural background ( Garneau & Pepin, 2015 ). Cultural competence is significant in establishing a healthy environment that facilitates remarkable organization behavior with minimal disputes and increased respect and inclusiveness. In recent times, several organizations are striving to improve cultural diversity through diversity management. Diversity management is the organization's actions and plans to recruit and maintain people from different backgrounds into the organization structure by using particular policies and programs.
Impacts of US Diverse Demographics on the Healthcare Industry
The United States has encountered an increase in demographic diversities in recent years, affecting the healthcare industry in providing services and workforce setup. The US healthcare industries have strived to recruit people from diverse backgrounds to enhance culturally competent care for minority groups (Eastland et al., 2018). As a result, managers and policymakers from the minority team have contributed immensely to making decisions and policies that ensure that the minority healthcare needs are supplied adequately and effectively. The US healthcare systems seem to understand the importance of reinforcing diverse cultural competence as more people from different backgrounds are being recruited through programs like affirmative actions. In addition to recruitment, the training programs are being offered in colleges and universities to help the younger generation understand diversity and empower students from minority groups to pursue healthcare courses (Bouye et al.,2016). Training the young generation about diversity will create a strong foundation for the USA to embrace diversity in a few years ultimately.
Additionally, changes in the US demographics have led to changes in diverse patients seeking medical services. A significant number of patients who visit medical facilities daily are from diverse backgrounds. Therefore, the USA healthcare providers are faced with challenges to effectively deliver healthcare services without violating the diverse patients' values and beliefs. In some occurrences, the main barrier tends to be misunderstanding each other due to language barriers.
Impacts of Understanding Diversity
Understanding diversity is essential because it facilitates awareness, empathy, and understanding in both a local and global community. It enhances a person to embrace all individuals' uniqueness and strive to build healthy relationships regardless of the existing differences. Furthermore, understanding diversity enables one to understand why particular people behave the way they do; as a result, people understand each and interact at ease in a community. Additionally, people show concerns and emotions when they comprehensively understand diversity. When diversity is embraced, people strive to view things from the other person’s perceptions, and in most cases, it results in empathy. Consequently, people become more respectful other than discriminatory toward people from a diverse background. Similarly, empathy, awareness, and understanding are extended to the global community when people understand diversity profoundly.
Conclusion
In conclusion, understanding diversity in the healthcare set up will prompt a healthy environment that will facilitate efficient healthcare service delivery and shape the organizational behavior because diversity affects how healthcare services are delivered. Diverse demographic affects the healthcare systems because different people from different backgrounds have variations in their beliefs and values. Therefore, healthcare providers may feel challenged to work with patients from diverse backgrounds because they may not share similar values and beliefs. All healthcare providers need to familiarize themselves with different beliefs and values available where their health institution is located. Diverse demographics have led to cultural competence in organizations that involve understanding other people’s uniqueness and interacting without cultural belief barriers. Cultural competence also helps in shaping organizational behavior.
Additionally, the demographic changes in the US have affected the healthcare industry. USA healthcare institutions have strived to recruit people from different backgrounds. Lastly, understanding diversities supports awareness, understanding, and empathy both at the local and global community.
References
Bouye, K. E., McCleary, K. J., & Williams, K. B. (2016). Increasing diversity in the health professions: reflections on student pipeline programs. Journal of healthcare, science, and the humanities , 6 (1), 67.
Eastland, T. Y., Morrow, M. R., & Davis, J. H. (2018). Effectiveness of institutional strategies to recruit and retain minority nurses: a systematic review protocol. JBI database of systematic reviews and implementation reports , 16 (7), 1490-1494.
Garneau, A. B., & Pepin, J. (2015). Cultural competence: A constructivist definition. Journal of Transcultural Nursing , 26 (1), 9-15.
