Understanding Value Based Healthcare

Cultural Competence: Mucho County Healthcare System

The United States’ population is becoming increasingly diverse. Immigration has made a major contribution towards the extensive cultural diversity in the country’s population. The healthcare industry has encountered an urgent need to shift towards a multicultural system that enables efficient delivery of care. The respective health agencies continue to strive to create an environment that offers culturally competent care through training and the inclusion of important elements in the school curricula. The achievement of a completely culturally competent healthcare sector is an ongoing process (Cultural and Ethical Issues in Working with Culturally Diverse Patients and Their Families: The Use of the Culturagram to Promote Cultural Competent Practice in Health Care Settings, 2004). Achieving a culturally accommodative healthcare system is a challenge due to the barriers that hinder the process as well as the ethical and legal dilemmas that arise in the process.

Ethical Principles

Ethical principles and cultural competence are different concepts that are critical to service delivery at Mucho County Healthcare System. Cultural competence is “a dynamic, complex and continually evolving process of skill development by health care professionals to respond appropriately to their clients’/patients’ unique combination of cultural variables … to ensure efficacy in working within the cultural context of their clients/patients” (Louw, 2016). The process of gaining cultural competence requires the healthcare system to respect the clients’ cultural elements, values, languages, and preferences. The providers are ethically obligated to respect any cultural differences that arise in the healthcare setting. Such sensitivity allows healthcare providers to offer care that meets the varying needs of clients adequately.

The first step towards achieving such sensitivity is controlling the social biases that are innate or learned. Secondly, it is important to see others’ perceptions through relating and interacting with them. Thirdly, the need to understand the different emotional expressions facilitates proper responses towards diversity. Fourthly, it is necessary to interpret ethics within different situations and use effective modes of communication. These recommendations are connected to the main ethical principles that govern healthcare, including beneficence, autonomy, and justice (Louw, 2016). Once the healthcare professionals at the facilities master these principles through the recommended actions, they will be able to respect all patients regardless of cultural backgrounds, acknowledge their differences, and avoid or minimize any negative effects that may arise from the situation.

Role of Culture in Healthcare Service Delivery

Culture entails shared beliefs, values, and social activities that specific groups identify with. The patient population entails individuals who subscribe to different beliefs, which affect their health in one way or another. The varying beliefs affect a patient’s perception of care and the provider’s delivery of the same. These effects manifest in the decisions that patients make regarding their health, the type of care they accord to themselves or family members, and their understanding of care concepts.

Healthcare providers are often urged to identify and suppress their personal beliefs or stereotypes, which may interfere with the delivery of care. Their ability to identify the different biases and control them opens an opportunity for culturally competent healthcare practices. The inability to identify these biases and attend to patients in ways that meet their needs undermines the likelihood of positive outcomes and interactions between care providers and patients (Geri-Ann Galanti, 2019). For patients, different cultural aspects affect their process of healing. For instance, religious beliefs determine a patient’s likelihood to seek care or accept various interventions that healthcare providers recommend.

Religion not only affects an individual’s spirituality, but also their dietary behaviors. Buddhists are vegetarians and avoid alcohol, tobacco, and coffee. Religion values a human’s state of mind and does not accept any treatment that would alter this negatively. In addition, Buddhists can accept artificial insemination, the donation of organs, as well as birth control. However, Christianity has different tolerances that are related to the process of care delivery. Christians believe that illness occurs due to a lack of harmony between matter and mind. When dealing with Christian patients, they may not accept abortion to save, birth control, vaccinations, euthanasia, and organ donation (Swihart, Yarrarapu, & Martin, 2021).

Such religious differences affect the process that a patient goes through before they heal. Some may take longer to recover; others may recover rapidly, while others may succumb to a condition due to their health-related decisions. Thus, Mucho County Healthcare System must be able to accommodate all the varying patients’ cultural beliefs and allow patients to make decisions that fit their cultural perceptions. The care providers also have a chance and the expertise to shed light on various concepts that may fail to agree with the patient’s cultural beliefs. The healthcare provider’s ability to facilitate the patient’s decision-making begins through communication to ensure that they understand their cultural beliefs. Lack of this understanding could lead to inappropriate responses that are likely to highlight the providers’ stereotypes and biases (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2015). The presence of open communication promotes positive health outcomes as patients and care providers work on a treatment plan that addresses the patient’s needs.

Barriers to Achieving Cultural Competence in an Organization

Language barrier is one of the common hindrances to the achievement of cultural competence, as reported by practitioners. It affects the process of communication negatively because the provider cannot create a rapport, provide instruction, obtain information from the patient, or establish their opinion regarding available treatment methods. This eventually affects the patient’s compliance with the doctor’s instructions, reducing the chances for positive outcomes. Cultural differences also affect the process of service delivery. For instance, gender stereotypes that exist across various cultures present challenges when dealing with males such as fathers. In some cultures, parents do not play with their children, an aspect that complicates the delivery of services. The lack of sufficient resources hinders the achievement of cultural competence. This manifests through a lack of training and insufficient interpreters, which enables the language barriers (Grandpierre, Milloy, & Sikora, 2018).

Cultural Diversity in Healthcare

Cultural diversity is a healthcare concern due to the opportunities and threats it presents for facilities and the patient population. Understanding cultural differences can lead to the delivery of compassionate healthcare. These differences frustrate patients and practitioners alike. This frustration manifests in poor health outcomes. The opposite, which is heightened cultural competence, increase patient satisfaction, positive health outcomes, job satisfaction, and eliminates frustration (Geri-Ann Galanti, 2019).

Achieving Cultural Competence

The staff at Mucho County Healthcare System facilities should undertake training to increase their cultural awareness. Such an opportunity opens their minds to different populations of patients. It also imparts knowledge regarding the importance of cultural competence among the staff members. In addition, the employees should identify their personal biases that may interfere with the delivery of culturally competent care. Most importantly, they should work on their communication skills to facilitate understanding the patients’ cultural beliefs.

References

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2015). Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit, 2nd Edition. Retrieved from https://www.ahrq.gov/health-literacy/improve/precautions/tool10.html

Cultural and Ethical Issues in Working with Culturally Diverse Patients and Their Families: The Use of the Culturagram to Promote Cultural Competent Practice in Health Care Settings. (2004). Social Work in Healthcare, 39(3-4), 249-262.

Geri-Ann Galanti. (2019). Cultures . Retrieved from https://www.ggalanti.org/cultural-diversity-in-healthcare/

Grandpierre, V., Milloy, V., & Sikora, L. (2018). Barriers and facilitators to cultural competence in rehabilitation services: a scoping review. BMC Health Services Research, 18(23).

Louw, B. (2016). Cultural Competence and Ethical Decision Making for Health Care Professionals. Humanities and Social Sciences, 4(2-1), 41-52.

Swihart, D. L., Yarrarapu, S. N., & Martin, R. L. (2021). Cultural Religious Competence In Clinical Practice. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493216/

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Understanding Value Based Healthcare

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