Intercultural Competence Paper

Cultural competency can be viewed as an ongoing journey of commitment and active engagement through the process of cultural awareness, knowledge, skills and cultural encounter (Coolen, 2012).Trust is the underlying purpose behind cultural competency in the development of health care provider and patient relationship. Health care professionals need to become more sensitive, respectful and attentive to the patients cultural beliefs and practices. Self-awareness is particularly important when communicating where barriers exists, unconscious prejudices may hinder the successful building of therapeutic relationships. In order to provide culturally sensitive pain management, a patients pain must be considered within the context of the individual’s

Guideline 1: Psychologists are encouraged to recognize that, as cultural beings, they may hold attitudes and beliefs that can detrimentally influence their perceptions of and interactions with individuals who are ethnically and racially different from themselves (American Psychological Association, 2003). I agree that psychologist can hold many different beliefs concerning others. The beliefs can sometimes hinder a person from growing emotionally, and cognitively. In my opinion it is important for the professional to be familiar with the diversity that may exist in their patients and remain professional in their

For us to develop cultural competence we need to have a level expertise, knowledge and attributes. When I mention Expertise I am referring to professional skills such as, being able to communicate correct information for culturally different people and their communities, the skill to candidly discuss racial and ethnic issues and to react to culturally based signs, the skill to understand the meaning that traditions/culture has for each person, Interviewing skills that help to understand and accommodate the role of language in a person’s culture and the skill to use the idea of empowerment on behalf of culturally different people and communities.

"Cultural competence is defined 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 (Cross et al., 1989; Issacs & Benjamin, 1991). Operationally defined, cultural competence is the integration and transformation of knowledge about individuals and groups of people into specific standard, policies, practices, and attitudes, used in appropriate cultural settings to increase the

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

Arthur H. Woodard, Jr., MSW Soulhelp@me.com Jim Wuelfing, NRPP Jim.Wuelfing@gmail.com  Name?  From where?  Doing what?  Why here?

focuses on intercultural competence, specifically cultural, religious, and world views (CRW), at each step in the ethical decision-making process (Luke, Goodrich, & Gilbride, 2013). For example, a counselor using this model, with the same dilemma of breaching student confidentiality, would recognize that within an ethical dilemma CRW elements exist, would identify CRW factors, such as a student’s cultural view, identify school policies and procedures, such as reporting of student drug use, consult with cultural experts to make sure CRW factors identified are accurate, list courses of action, analyze the course of actions with identified CRW factors, and finally select, record, and evaluate the course of action that meets the students cultural, religious, and world-views (Luke, Goodrich, & Gilbride, 2013). The IMED provides careful consideration of differing cultural, religious, and world-views of the students, counselor, and other systems (Luke, Goodrich, & Gilbride, 2013). Although both models are effective in providing methods to resolve ethical and legal issues when working with students, the IMED model would be better suited for a school counselor to use because of the diversity of the students within a school and the IMED step that specifies identifying relevant policies within a school system (Luke, Goodrich, & Gilbride, 2013), thereby providing the counselor to not only consider ethical and legal concerns but the unique policies of a school as well .

Both articles were very informative and provided information about how agencies need to change in order to become culturally competent. The agency I intern with this year is the Toms River Regional School District, specifically High School East, in that respect, my agency is very different than those in the two articles reviewed. Some of the core issues are the same when it comes to needed to learn cultural competency in terms of race and sexual orientation specifically. I have seen a similar issue in my agency needing to address cultural competency. Toms River School District is not very culturally diverse, in the sense that the staff and students lack ethnic diversity, but there are students and staff who are part of the LGBT community. Slowly,

Culturally competent care has fast become a byword in health care with the increasing global migration of populations including healthcare providers topmost of whom are nurses. There abound a number of definitions of culture and competence in current literature provided by multiple disciplines and organizations. Lehman, Fenza and Smith (n.d.) refers to culture as “the learned patterns of behavior and range of beliefs” which includes ways of life, norms and values, social institutions attributed to a specific group and passed on through generations . While competence implies capacity to function and translates into behavior appropriate application of knowledge and attitudes. Giger and companions (as cited in Loftin, Hartin, Branson, & Reyes,

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

Most definitely, America is a melting pot, it’s amazing how much diversity there is. You’re correct “. In this industry, it is important to not be prejudice, racist, or to simply feel that your rights, views, or feelings are more important than anyone else.” As healthcare providers, your goal should be to meet the needs of everyone despite personal feelings. Teamwork is very significant when working in the health field, if that team can master the acceptance of culture differences it can lead to a positive wave throughout the rest of the organization. Yes, “To overcome any cultural or any other difference one must be culturally competent.” I feel all industries should practice being culturally competent, in working to improve health, communication,

It is high time that people learn about different cultures to have a thorough understanding of the same and thus achieve cultural competency. This is necessary for educators, healthcare givers, attorneys, organizations and all to live in a cross-cultural world without any emotional or physical conflict. Most organizations have their presence in multiple countries and have business relations with people of different cultural groups. So, for a successful business also, cultural competency is the demand.

Orientation to Knowledge- The terms people use to explain themselves and the world around them

Intercultural communication competence refers to the ability of an individual to adapt and communicate appropriately and effectively across a wide array of cultural contexts. That is to say, for an individual to be considered an intercultural communicator they must understand other’s cultures as well as they understand their own, and apply this understanding to communication (Chen 1-2). With the increasing diversity at the workplace, school and other social settings, it has become increasingly important to learn how to communicate with people from a diverse array of cultures. More importantly, adapting to a more effective intercultural communication competence model provides us with learning opportunities occasioned by the interaction with people from other backgrounds. The intercultural communication competence model comes with some key components including tolerance for uncertainty, self-knowledge, and motivation. The greatest and most important of these aspects is motivation. An individual must be willing to foster relationships with people from a different cultural background. If an individual lacks the willingness to promote intercultural relationships, then other aspects of the intercultural communication model become moot.