Importance Of Cultural Diversity In Healthcare

A major part of working in the healthcare system is building rapport quickly with a family and the patient. Sometimes staff only has minutes to build some type of rapport with a patient and their family, which can affect the therapeutic relationship for the remainder of that patient’s care. As we have discussed in our child life courses, before entering a room, the doctor/nurse/CLS/therapist/any staff member should prepare for contact and have at least a slight understanding of the family dynamic, culture, and background. The staff member should also take into account not only the chronological age, developmental age, and health literacy of the patient, but of the parents. Of course, the staff member should be aware of any language barrier
It is important that staff members are aware of their own biases, assumptions, and values and that they are able to put aside differences in culture when working with families. Providing culturally competent care also includes being sensitive to language barriers and customs. It is important that healthcare staff members are aware that health beliefs incorporate not only the physical illness but the emotional and spiritual beliefs of the family’s cultures as well. The source of the illness is also something that staff members need to keep in mind when caring for a patient, some believe that supernatural forces cause illness rather than viruses and genetics. When providing culturally competent services in the healthcare setting, it may be necessary to ask questions of the family, research the culture, or even make referrals to others such as an interpreter or anthropologist. With the Lee family, doctors attempted to but never fully provided culturally competent services. The doctors never explicitly asked what the Lee’s believed was medically wrong with their daughter, and when they learned of the spiritual connection there was still little effort made to understand their viewpoints. Vice versa, the Lee’s never made extreme efforts to understand American medicine. If more staff members had tried to understand the Hmong beliefs of “quag dab peg,” there may have been efforts to make changes to Lia’s medical care and to make the Lee’s more comfortable and compliant with the treatment regimen provided to Lia. There was a lack of access to interpreters to help with the Lia’s; However, the staff could have contacted sources outside the hospital such as a shaman to make the Lee’s more comfortable with the approach to healing their daughter. The staff made no efforts to hide their biases to the Hmong culture, which regardless of language barriers could have