Awareness

It is important to increase our awareness on the importance of cultural competence/cultural safety in healthcare organizations to ensure everyone is provided with high-quality, equitable care.  Differences between healthcare providers and patients can affect communication and as providers we have to take a step back to ensure we are providing culturally competent/safe care.  When healthcare providers overlook the differences between them and their patients, they may unintentionally deliver low quality care to ethnic minorities (Kaihlanen et al., 2019).  For instance, if a provider assumes that a patient's silence or lack of eye contact during a consultation is a lack of interest in undergoing treatment, then the patient may not have a chance to pursue standard treatment options.  Indigenous Corporate Training Inc. (2012) explains that an avoidance of eye contact and silence in indigenous peoples is actually customarily viewed as a sign of respect or a protection mechanism from the physical punishment experienced by residential school survivors. 

What is Culturally Safe Health Care?

Cultural safety refers to the recognition of power imbalances inherent in the health system between the provider and patient, and health professionals continuously revisiting their own knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours (Curtis et al., 2019). Curtis et al. (2019) argues that a narrow understanding of cultural competency may be harmful and we actually need to consider cultural safety to avoid “othering” individuals who might be different than ourselves and basing our understanding of cultures on cultural stereotypes.  Further, the concept of cultural safety corresponds with the critical theory paradigm, where health providers are encouraged to inspect structural variables such as social class and power, social justice and equity (Curtis et al., 2019).  

Case Study/Learning Activity 1: 

A local community experiences an increase of orthodox Jewish individuals and the hospital staff/community health services have limited knowledge on the customs and preferences of this patient population.  Staff have already reported that men are refusing to shake hands/make eye contact with healthcare providers who are female, hospitalized patients are refusing to eat, and many patients are needing to consult with a Rabbi before making any healthcare decisions. 

How could healthcare providers and hospital administrators respond to this situation in a culturally competent/safe way to ensure patients are provided with equitable care?