Cultural diversity in medicine means not only the presence of patients of different races and cultures but also the working staff, which is also diverse in terms of race, age, and gender. Cultural diversity plays a significant role in medical field because the extensive experience accumulated and acquired by people of different cultural backgrounds demonstrates a wide range of knowledge and practice (Lin et al., 2017). To support cultural diversity in the medical field, it is imperative to regularly educate patients, staff, and service providers about how important it is to accept cultural differences. Healthcare organizations should conduct various training on cultural competence that should be focused not only on patients but also on service providers and their relationships between themselves and employees.
Cultural competence is of great importance in the medical field, both for the communication of medical staff and patients and for the work of service providers with each other, as well as with employees. The lack of communication skills with representatives of different races and ethnicities and knowledge about the culture of other people will lead to a significant decrease in the efficiency of service providers and employees (Nair & Adetayo, 2019). The ability to work together and share one’s own experience will allow providing high-quality services to patients. For people to gain this knowledge, the healthcare company must conduct various trainings.
In addition to the significant experience that people belonging to different races can share in the work of service providers and employees, there are other reasons for conducting training. The language barrier may be one of the main reasons why medical organizations need to conduct trainings (Shepherd et al., 2019). This is important to teach basic knowledge that will help service providers communicate more successfully with each other and staff. A complete lack of understanding of each other’s language can lead to many misunderstandings and subsequent problems that will negatively impact the quality of services in the future.
Cultural competence will help to focus on how to provide services most effectively to patients and provide high-quality types of interventions. In addition, cultural competence will help to introduce modern innovative devices and types of treatment, along with traditional approaches from different countries. Trainings will also help service providers and staff to gain knowledge about patients of other races and nationalities in order to make treatment and stay in a medical institution as comfortable as possible (Nair & Adetayo, 2019). Reducing cultural barriers through training will improve the results of the treatment provided, as well as increase patient satisfaction with the quality of medical services.
Cultural competence plays a significant role and helps to improve the quality of medical services provided in many ways. Through the organization’s training for medical staff and service providers, patient safety will increase, the number of deaths will decrease, and the quality of specialists’ work will increase. In addition, periodic training will help reduce the cost of other unnecessary needs that can be eliminated (Shepherd et al., 2019). Training should include understanding the behavior of people of different races and ethnicities and knowledge about respect and approach to patients. Cultural competence significantly improves the results of treatment and recovery of patients regardless of their ethnicity and nationality (Lin et al., 2017). Moreover, specialists need to be aware of how to communicate most successfully with patients’ relatives.
References
Lin, C., Lee, C., & Huang, M. (2017). Cultural competence of healthcare providers: A systematic review of assessment instruments. Journal of Nursing Research, 25(3), 174-186. Web.
Nair, L., & Adetayo, O. A. (2019). Cultural competence and ethnic diversity in health care. Plastic and reconstructive surgery. Global open, 7(5), e2219. Web.
Shepherd, S.M., Willis-Esqueda, C., Newton, D., Sivasubramaniam, D., & Paradies, Y. (2019). The challenge of cultural competence in the workplace: Perspectives of healthcare providers. BMC Health Services Research, 19(135), 1-11. Web.