What Is The Definition Of Health Care

The increasing population of immigrants in the United States has contributed to health disparities in the health care system. Cultural competence can remove health disparities by eliminating personal biases, and treating every person with respect. Simply recognizing and accepting different cultures is not enough, one must be able to consistently recognize and understand the differences in order to be culturally competent. Knowledge and culturally competent practices are a must for nurses to deliver quality care in our rapidly changing multicultural world (Edelman, 2014 p. 25).

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

Cultural competence in health care describes the ability to provide care to patients with diverse values, beliefs and behaviors, including tailoring health care delivery to meet patients’ social, cultural and linguistic needs. The need for healthcare systems to increase cultural competence and personalize care for ethnic patient minorities should not be ignored. Healthcare systems should promote better understanding and communication between diverse ethnic patients and caregivers. Hospitals should design a system that caters to the needs of all the populations they serve and not just apply a one-size-fits-all approach. Becoming a culturally competent health care organization is a critical component in reducing health care disparities.

America is melting pot; there are an enormous variety of cultures and ethnicities represented in our general population. This population diversity is also reflected in healthcare participants. With the diverse amount of backgrounds, there also becomes a need for transcultural health care and acknowledging that not every culture views

Cultural competency is becoming essential in American healthcare with the increasing and diversification of immigration. The Department of Homeland Security, 2014 statistics indicates over 750,000 immigrants received naturalization in the US. These naturalized citizens represent over 20 countries varying from Hispanic, Indian, Asian, African, and Middle Eastern cultures. A change in the way American healthcare treats these cultures is necessitated to provide efficient care and achieve positive outcomes. Douglas et al. (2014) guidelines are to empower patients to help diminish the inequities of their own healthcare. The guidelines for culturally competent care are meant to guide the nurse, nurse educators, and nurse managers in their competent treatment of persons of other cultures. These guidelines mandate a nurse use education, self-assessment and reflection, and diversification of the workforce to meet the demands. The ten guidelines are knowledge of culture, education and training in culturally competent care, critical reflection, cross-cultural communication, culturally competent practice, cultural competence in health care systems and organizations, patient advocacy and empowerment, multicultural workforce, cross-cultural leadership, and evidence-based practice and research.

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

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,

Miscommunication, medication errors, and lack of compliance commonly occur in the healthcare field. These are just a few of the errors that occur due to the patient being from a different culture than the physician or healthcare worker. Those three errors alone have a huge impact on our healthcare today. If we could have a better understanding of other cultures that are different from our own we could have a dramatic decrease in errors and a great increase in healthcare participation. Training must be completed and must be done in more than one way. The first step is to make sure that all physicians and health care workers get the same nationwide training that focuses on improving cultural competence. How this is completed must be done in more than one way (Horwitz, 2001).

On the other hand, although the healthcare provider is able to speak their patient's language, providers often fail to consider the patient's education level and may at times use medical jargons that the patient may not understand, thus resulting in a failure to communicate with their patient. Healthcare provider may lack the skills and knowledge in understanding their patient's culture other than their own. This often results in the medical provider "pushing" their beliefs onto their patient and if the desired results are not realized, this results in mistrust of the healthcare provider and the healthcare system. To increase cultural competence among healthcare workers and increase the amount of minority's access to healthcare, medical schools and medical facilities are incorporating "Clinical Cultural Competence Interventions." The goal of this program is to provide "educational and training interventions to equip healthcare providers with the knowledge, tools, and skills to better understand and manage socio-cultural issues in the clinical encounter," (Betancourt, Green, Carrillo, and Ananeh-Firempong, 2003, p. 298). Again, although the guidebook is an excellent tool, to achieve the desired health outcomes, it is up to the provider or healthcare team to incorporate these evidence based practices into their

As the United States population continues to follow the trend of increasing diversity, the need for more culturally competent healthcare professionals increases as well. According to some of the leading experts in health care policy, cultural competency in health care can be described as the ability of systems and/or healthcare professionals to provide care to patients with diverse values, beliefs, and behaviors, including tailoring delivery to meet patients’ social, cultural, and linguistic needs (Betancourt, J.R., Green, A.R., & Carrillo, J.E., 2002). These researchers assert that there are essentially three specific barriers to cultural competency in the health care setting: lack of diversity in health care’s leadership and workforce, poorly designed systems of care that fall short of meeting the needs of diverse patient populations, and poor communication between providers

Culture and values are standards that influence and shape human behaviors, decision making processes, personal relationships, and status of health and happiness. The United States has become a symbol of a multicultural society representing many different ethnicities and minority groups. As our culture continues to grow rapidly so is the necessity to increase awareness, understanding, and tolerance of these diverse groups. As health care providers we must understand the basic needs of our patients,

A cultural broker may serve as a guide in health care settings that are in the process of incorporating culturally and linguistically competent

“Family centered care is the delivery of safe, satisfying, high-quality health care that focuses on and adapts to the physical and psychosocial needs of the family. It is a cooperative effort between the family and their caregivers and recognizes and uses the strengths and integrity of the family” (Hammerstrand & Loewen, 2013, p. 9). According to Kuo et al. (2012), family centered care has surpassed the basic client/health care provider relationship, FCC encompasses the needs of the entire family as an entity. Benefits that have been noted include knowledge increase from the patient’s perspective, better self-care, and self-esteem of the caregivers, which lead to better outcomes for the child involved (Kuo et al., 2012). Harrison (2010) mentions that families want a partnership based relationship with health professionals, but the nurses are still finding it difficult to implement the approach in practice. Research has been done regarding FCC, but outcomes and delivery of FCC remain underdeveloped. All levels of healthcare delivery should be examined when researching FCC, but tertiary care seems to be the main level of care studied. More research needs to be done on the effects of FCC in all areas of healthcare (Harrison, 2010). FCC can be further broken down into eight core concepts, I will discuss four.

Family-centered care is a collaboration among patients, families, physicians, nurses, and other professionals for the planning, delivery, and evaluation of health care. Family-centered care can improve patient and family outcomes, increase patient and family satisfaction, build on child and family strengths, decrease health care costs, and lead to more effective use of health care resources. Family presence during health care procedures decreases anxiety for the child and the parents. “Research indicates that when parents are prepared, they do not prolong the procedure or make the provider more anxious (Harrison, 2009)”

Leininger’s cultural care model of diversity and universality provides a framework for providing culturally competent care and demonstrates the value of theory in practice. Patients and their family bring a unique set of values to the health care setting. These are derived from their culture, knowledge, experience with illness, and based upon former health care encounters (Crow et. al., 2011). Providing culturally competent care across the health care continuum is necessary for patient safety.