Importance of Cultural Competency in Healthcare
The increasing diversity of our nation brings opportunities and challenges for healthcare providers and healthcare systems to create and deliver culturally competent services. Cultural competence is defined as the ability of providers and organizations to effectively deliver healthcare services that meet the social, cultural, and linguistic needs of patients.
It became obvious during the outbreak of the novel coronavirus that Black, Hispanic, American Indian and Alaska Native communities were hit harder than the rest of the population. Although these inequalities have long existed in medicine, the COVID-19 pandemic served to motivate change in medicine.
Key pillars of cultural competence can include:
- Clear efforts to understand community needs
- A broad definition of culture
- Acknowledgement of language interpretation needs
- Continued learning among organizational leaders
- Cultural competency training for staff members and clinicians
- Cultural competency ingrained in organizational policies
“A culturally competent healthcare system can help improve health outcomes and quality of care as well as improve racial and ethnic health disparities,” said Roberto Madrid MD, Vice President of Medical Group Operations at PIH Health. “PIH Health has been moving towards these goals by providing relevant training on cultural competence and cross-cultural issues to all our employees and creating policies that reduce administrative and linguistic barriers to patient care.”
