Cultural Competence Reflection

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Over the past four months, this course has been one of the most eye-opening experiences I have had during my first year of college. Although I have always realized the importance of being culturally competent in daily life, specifically healthcare, I was unaware of the many ways that cultural competence can be obtained. This class gave me the opportunity to view situations from a different perspective, especially through the weekly discussion boards and peer responses. Learning from classmate can teach more valuable lessons than listening to boring lectures or reading hundreds of pages in a textbook because it is easier to relate to experience rather than hypothetical situations. For example, one of the discussion boards asked us to detail …show more content…

Hallmarks of cultural competence, including role development and self-discovery, play an instrumental part in the cultural diversity within an organization as a whole. Diversity stems from the top, from CEO’s and executive boards, and trickles down to employees and patients. However, one thing I learned in this course is that people hold biases that they are unaware of and that cultural competence does not happen overnight. With this acquired knowledge, it has been brought to my attention about which implicit biases I hold and how I can work to eliminate them. Secondly, language access services, as an aspiring speech-language pathologist, play a direct role in my future career because I want to give a voice to the often misunderstood. Regarding effective communication, “good interpretation and good translation go a long way toward solving cross-cultural communication problems and language barriers in health care” (Dreachslin, Gilbert & Malone, 2013, p. 289). These services, through interpreters or voice-assisted devices, provide better opportunities to blend cultures and understand the tradition and beliefs of diverse populations. These two topics were just samplings of the information discussed, but they stuck out to me on a personal level, while pushing me to promote cultural competence and understanding beyond this course in all my future workplace