ipl-logo

Cultural Competency Essay

1523 Words7 Pages

The importance of cultural diversity in healthcare settings is growing for nurses and other medical personnel. In the literature, cultural competence and cultural humility are sometimes used interchangeably, yet they have unique meanings and implications for healthcare practitioners. In the 1980s, cultural competency evolved in healthcare as a response to the need to address cultural diversity and its impact on healthcare delivery. Nevertheless, the term originates in the far older intercultural communication and understanding of the subject. One of the oldest allusions to the concept of cultural competency may be traced back to the 1959 publication of Edward T. Hall's seminal work, "The Silent Language." In this book, Hall emphasizes the …show more content…

This necessitates attentive listening, the acceptance of prejudices, and the appreciation of cultural differences (Purnell, 2005). Many studies have emphasized the importance of cultural competence in improving healthcare outcomes for various groups, such as reducing health disparities and increasing patient satisfaction and the credibility of healthcare practitioners (Brach & Fraser, 2000; Betancourt et al., 2003; Beach et al., 2005; Thom et al., 2006). According to a study of community health center healthcare practitioners, those with higher levels of cultural competency were more likely to provide patient-centered care and have better patient outcomes (Sawrikar & Katz, 2014). Similarly, a systematic review emphasizes the importance of cultural competency in healthcare, arguing that in order to provide effective and equitable care, healthcare personnel must understand and respond to their patients' cultural, linguistic, and social demands (Dreachslin et al., 2012). Furthermore, Lie et al. (2011) discovered that, while cultural competence training is an important component of healthcare education and practice, more high-quality research is needed to fully understand the …show more content…

Cultural competemility is defined as the synergistic process between cultural humility and cultural competence, in which cultural humility permeates each of the five components of cultural competence: cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, cultural skill, cultural desire, and cultural encounters (Campinha-Bacote, 2018). This perspective implies that cultural competemility can be viewed as both a becoming and a being process. Individuals must simultaneously engage in the processes of acquiring cultural competency and cultural

Open Document