Cultural Competency

Cultural competency is critical in psychology practice. In the United States, the groups, which considered as cultural and ethnic minorities, are growing in the population (APA, 2003). Culture often influences the content and quality of people’s experience, perception, and response. Thus, it is important for psychologists to be aware of cultural influences on client’s presenting experience(s) (Gardiner & Kosmitzki, 2010). Without a regard for cultural influence, there is a significant risk for the psychologist to misunderstand, misinterpret, and misguide his or her client. Such misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and misguidance are not only unhelpful but can be detrimental for the client (Corey, Corey, & Callanan, 2011; Pope, & Vasquez, 2011).

For this assignment, I have chosen to reflect on both my school site and the district.

Relocating into a senior care facilities can be a frightening experience for the aging population. Getting familiar with new surroundings, new organization structure, and new people that can cause anxiety to rise. For a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer individual, this experience can be traumatic. The fear of harassment, hostility, and neglect by healthcare providers and caretakers can keep LGBTQ people from seeking care until their health begins to critically decline. LGBTQ cultural competency training is highly recommended for healthcare professionals and social service organizations. The greatest barrier that prevents quality health care for LGBTQ people is the lack of competence among the healthcare professionals.

I have learned that it is important that educators  and health providers be trained on cultural competency to understand the population they are serving. Marks, Sims, and Osher (King, Sims, & Osher, n.d.) define cultural competency  as a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals and enables that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in cross–cultural situations" ( as cited in Cross et al., 1989; Isaacs & Benjamin, 1991). Health providers and educators should investigate demographic patterns or trends in the place where they live and work. This brings awareness of the types of cultures that they might come across when they are working with people. Organizations should integrate and implement policies that promote the value of  diversity, self-assessment, manage the dynamics of difference, acquire and institutionalize cultural knowledge, and adapt to diversity and the cultural contexts of communities they serve (Georgetown  University, 2004). Georgetown University (2004) also stresses that culture competency grows gradually and is always open for improvement.

Cultural competency is a set of appropriate behaviours, attitudes and policies among professionals and enables them to work efficiently in cross-cultural situations (NCCC, 2006). A culturally competent health care system can eliminate cultural inequities, provide greater quality of care, and have less patient dissatisfaction and more positive health consequences. A conclusion reached in a study (Palafox et al., 2002) states, culture influences the outcome of medical examination and; therefore, it is vital to provide culturally competent health care services. Cultural competency is especially important in the context of radiographic examination due to the variety of culturally different patients a radiographer comes in contact. The following case study effectively highlights the impact of cultural competency.

Cultural competency is the capacity of people or services to include ethnic/cultural considerations into all aspects of their work related to health promotion, disease prevention and other and other healthcare interventions (Cultural competence is important for several reasons, (Purnell, 2008a).First, it can contribute in the development of culturally sensitive practices which can reduce barriers that effect treatment in healthcare settings. Second, it can promote understanding, which is detrimental in cultural competence assessment, to know whom, the individuals known as the primary care provider and whom they view as the primary healer, can attribute to the promotion of trust and increase the person’s interest in participating

“The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity. She learns to be an Indian in Mexican culture, to be Mexican from an Anglo point of view. She learns to juggle cultures. She has a plural personality, she operates in a pluralistic mode—nothing is thrust out, the good, the bad, and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. Not only does she sustain contradictions, she returns the ambivalence into something else”

The progress I have made on building cultural competence is I met this guy while I was at work, and he was telling about how his insurance won’t be able to cover for his visit to campus health. I suggested to him that maybe he change health care providers to someone who can possibly help cover more things than the one he has now. Also in one of my public health classes one of my teachers is having a luncheon with people who have HIV and I know if I go to the event I can get a better insight on what they are dealing with and find out ways to help them, since the luncheon is ran by an organization that helps people who live with HIV, or I could just give them support

While examining the life of the Lee family, it was easy to identify that Hmong culture is much different than Western culture today. The Lee’s faced many adversities that not only affect their lives but the life of their ill daughter Lia. By analyzing culture, stigma, prevention, and implications, one can begin to see how the Hmong culture collides in the care of Lia.

Some of the author’s major points are the lack of understanding of what cultural competence really means which is bringing confusion about ways it can be utilized in the social work field. The confusion of the utilization of cultural competence is leading to the lack of consensus concerning the effective training that providers should obtain and the population being served with the cultural competence skills lack clear description. According to the author, the most popular cultural competence intervention in the healthcare system is the cultural competency training which is for health care providers and the two approaches that have been utilized in creating the intervention are; the programs aimed at improving knowledge which is group specific,

In this great nation we live in today that has been vastly increasing diversity bring so many great opportunities. But with these great opportunities there are also challenges that are continually looked over constantly. One of the challenges is our health care system that fails to deliver culturally competent services. Cultural competency helps to enable providers to deliver services that are respectful to diverse patients. This helps with patients own health beliefs, practices and cultural and linguistic needs. This is why this training is needed in every health facility. Many doctors go through this problem not understanding their patient’s needs. If I were a doctor I would use this skill. Certain racial and ethnic minorities receive poorer

I just had a conversation with Dr. Mark Gooden over in the college of education. Dr. Gooden is the person I reached out to regarding the cultural competency training for the updates. I will talk to Mike and Alexandra about what I learned. I think it will be a good addition to the week, but I need to try to make it work with the schedule – he needs a minimum of about three hours, but I think we can fit it in. Dr. Gooden’s research is actually in this area and he does this training across the state and nationally for school districts, principals, and other businesses. He’s willing to do it as part of his “service to UT” but he did ask if, in lieu of a payment he would typically charge for this kind of training, if we would be willing

The EYLF proposes that cultural competency cannot be mastered but is something educators continually strive for; by respecting, understanding, engaging with and positively acknowledging and teaching cultural diversity within the childcare industry.

Cultural competences are behaviours, values, attitudes and policies that a body of professionals should encompass in order to effectively work with other cultures (Bureau of Primary Health Care 2005). Culture includes shared values, beliefs, religion, norms and customs. Competence is the ability to function as an individual and part of a team (Office of Minority Health 2017). According to Mayhew cultural competence also involves the impact that culture has on how an individual perceives health, illness and recovery (Mayhew 2016). The Georgetown University emphasized that cultural competence is being able to provide health services that meet social, cultural and language needs of service users. There are different definitions because cultural competency can be viewed from different angles. One angle is from the healthcare professional and what skills they require in order to present cultural competency. The second view is from the service users and one’s culture may affect their perception of health.

Understand cultural competence and why is it important especially for that have a diverse workforce.