Multicultural Reflection

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.

My life experiences with different cultures began in my hometown, when Prairie Island Tribal Council members educated students about their culture through lectures, dance, and band performances. This allowed me to appreciate my Mdewakanton classmates’ culture. My exposure to different cultures expanded during an internship at a medical examiner’s office, because death is universal. I learned being culturally respectful and sensitive begins by listening to their stories and experiences before answering their questions honestly and reassuring them the deceased would be treated with respect. As I traveled to rural Honduras on a medical brigade and as a student studying abroad in Italy and Germany, I realized by listening and observing without judgement, I began to understand the cultures. In addition, I discovered generalizations of a culture give an incomplete view and I cannot assume I understand a culture. Instead, individuals are unique based on experiences as well as their culture.

This caused me to think about various aspects of cultural diversity that are fundamental while dealing with clients. The information I gathered was key to my path to becoming a culturally competent occupational therapist in various ways. First, the idea of viewing patients from culturally and linguistically diverse community from various perspectives is new to me, and I intend to incorporate it into strategies with my potential clients by taking each individual as unique and distinct from the other hence serving them better. Secondly, the information on cultural competency being a dynamic and complex process requiring continuous expansion of personal, cultural know-how and self-evaluation was new. I intended to incorporate this while dealing with potential clients by continuous interaction with people from distinct cultures to be acquainted with knowledge on how best to serve the needs of each person

A person can learn a tremendous amount about an individual by exploring their culture. Culture is the doorway to the foundation of a person’s make-up. An individual can obtain a broader perspective on obvious concepts by gaining knowledge. Recently there have been a tremendous amount of publicity because of racial indifference, justice, and knowledge.

Cultural competence is a group of similar manners, attitudes, and strategies that collaborate in a system, organization or among experts and facilitate that system, organization or those professions to perform efficiently in cross-cultural states. A culturally competent health and wellness program provides services that take action to past inequities, existed realities, varied values, behaviors, and beliefs. It adapts advances to gather the diverse requirements of multicultural populations. Cultural competency can be implemented into our health and wellness programs by training the staff and health care experts of the programs to understand a patient’s diverse values, behaviors, beliefs, and modify treatment to meet the patients' community,

As a health care professional, we are faced with caring for patients of different cultural and ethnic background. Researching and learning about the patient’s culture values, beliefs and practices is essential and remarks the ability to provide quality health care for the patient. “Organizations and individuals who understand their clients’ cultural values, beliefs, and practices are in a better position to be coparticipants with their clients in providing culturally acceptable care” (Purnell & Paulanka, 2008, p. 2). After completing the cultural competence checklist, I was able to identify some of my responses to the patient cultural values and belief practices. I will describe a summary of my assessment results, analyze

Campinha- Bacote and colleagues describes the components for cultural competence in healthcare. These includes cultural ; a) knowledge, b) awareness, c) skills, d) encounter and e) desire. Cultural awareness refers to self-examination as well as in-depth exploration of an individual cultural as well as professional background. I am able to explore my own cultural healthcare values and beliefs. This is because understanding another person's does not guarantee that one will become cultural competent. I am now able to use the cultural awareness assessment to assess my personal level of cultural awareness, and to get an insight on the understanding of my cultural values and beliefs

My experience interacting with minorities and medically underserved individuals has taught me cultural competence by gradually learning the capacity to understand other people’s experiences and sufferings in a way I never had before. By working in family and free health clinics, and volunteering as an EMT and a hospice aide, I have personally seen some of the health disparities found in our world. I have witnessed how a lack of insurance, monetary income, or health education affects one’s decision to attain primary health care. Furthermore, my experiences with emergency medicine teams serving culturally diverse communities have helped me to be able to see how healthcare professionals handle crises while not losing the ability to think logically and rationally when striving to treat people’s illnesses, instead of focusing on their

Another outstanding point that you made in reference to applying cultural competence in your personal life is phenomenal. I believe getting to know who we are will help us pinpoint the areas that are not the strongest when providing cultural care to patients. Allowing us to work on our weaknesses and become proficient in the areas we lack. In order for us to become an expert in cultural competency and cultural care we need to apply it in every aspect of our lives.

The first step to achieving complete cultural competency is valuing diversity. It is a process that requires cultural humility. Unlike competency, cultural humility goes beyond simply being knowledgeable of differences, but having a humble desire to ensure a lifelong commitment to intercultural exchange (Tervalon & Murray-Garcia, 1998). I have witnessed some Americans oppose the idea of immigration and strongly believe that American services should not cater to immigrants. They believe that all foreigners should learn English and the United States should not accommodate their linguistic needs. These same people are aware of the cultural differences that exist in America, but lack cultural humility and appreciation for diversity, making it difficult for them to attain complete cultural competency. A public health professional cannot go into a community, assuming that everyone thinks and behaves like them. They must be open-minded, flexible, empathetic, and aware of the differences and similarities that exist. Therefore, cultural humility is a prerequisite in achieving cultural competence.

After taking the cultural competence self-test assessment from the intercultural engagement resource, I feel that I am more culturally competent than most but I still have more learning to do. This assessment helped me realize my place on the trajectory to being cultural competent. I am a strong believer that people are more receptive to their own culture, so I try to adapt to other cultures by learning things about it. I never intentionally try to impose my values on anyone that may be inconsistent with their culture. By taking care of patients from different cultures, it opened my eyes and made me realize medical attention and health education varies amongst different cultures. After taking the survey I also learned to be a culturally competent nurse, I must not show any bias to my own culture. The assessment helped me examine my own biases and prejudices toward my own cultures and others. This assessment also helped me identify areas in which I need to improve to provide quality services to diverse

Understanding where we come from is important to determine what cultural differences leads to our values, attitudes, practice, and principles. Cultural competence is necessary in our health care profession in order to provide an effective service to our diverse community. Cultural competence is one of many health care providers’ responsibilities. Self awareness and analysis of own culture help to sensitize our own feeling towards others cultural groups. Being born in Cuba, I thought that there was nothing else to learn about my own customs and culture.

Cultural competence can be depicted as having the knowledge of cultural groups that are different from one’s own and to be able to work with that individual in a way that makes them feel respected and understood (Harkreader, 2007). For health care providers to appreciate the strengths of different cultures, values, and beliefs, they need knowledge, but they

For health care workers, cultural competency is important for obvious reasons. On a daily basis, healthcare professionals work with patients of a variety of cultures, and many work with team members who come from different cultures than their own. Medical and other healthcare professionals spend many years in school learning how and when to treat patients for giving symptoms, but teaching them to interact with patients currently falls on knowing the things that make up a person’s cultural identity. Cultural differences that exist between people, such as language, dress and traditions, and the way societies organize themselves, their conception of morality and religion, attitudes about illness and death and the way they interact with the environment. Cultural competence is important in health care because the patient outcome, patient readmissions, staff retention, and labor relations all determine the outcome of an organizations success. Diversity improves the effectiveness and productivity of the workforce. Disadvantages of ignoring cultural diversity can result in a loss of revenue for the business. Company growth will also be affected by ignoring cultural diversity. Steps an organization should take to face this challenge is to implement training that cover workforce diversities and keep an open dialogue among employees expressing concerns, differences, ideas, etc.

There have been significant events throughout my life that has influenced, impacted, and changed my ways of thinking, both when I was younger, and as I have reached middle age. When I was nine years old, my family moved from Coeur d’Alene Idaho to Juneau Alaska when my father started a new position at a recently built HUD Housing apartment complex that helped with low-income households. Upon moving there, this was my first experience with Native Americans and experience racism and poverty at levels I had never experienced before. Growing up, my family was poor, but I had never realized it, for my parents tried to raise my brother and myself differently. There were times when I lived in Idaho when I would play with my friend, and his parents made comments, but I did not think much at the time.