Cultural competence is very important in providing patient care. Culturally competent providers should understand and respect the patient’s beliefs, values, and behaviors, and develop a treatment or care based on the patient’s specific needs. Being a healthcare professional requires you not only to assess, diagnose, and make a treatment plan, but also take into account patient’s beliefs and perception of their health-related issues.
Nowadays, there is more emphasis on educating healthcare providers to not only focus on disease and diagnosis, but also incorporate assessment of patient’s experiences, feelings and perceptions of his or her disease into a patient care. I feel that most of the younger generation healthcare providers try to explain the disease and treatment to the patient and hear what is the patient’s perspective on it to ensure that a patient is part of the healthcare team. Assessing patient’s perspective on things may increase patient’s compliance and improve patient’s outcomes. However, some of the old school doctors don’t really like to explain their decision-making and assess patient’s perspective on things.
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He usually would perform physical examination, order labs, and decide on the treatment, but almost never includes my grandmother in his decision making process or asks what does she think about the situation. I talked to my grandmother about this matter, but to my surprise, she is very much satisfied with her doctor and would not want to be more involved in her health care. I compared my PCP visit and realized that I would want completely opposite experience. When I go to my doctor I want to know everything about what is going on with my health and I want to be totally involved in my healthcare. I want my doctor to ask me questions about how I feel about certain things and what I believe will work for