Educating Medical Professionals to Deliver Quality Health Care to Diverse Patient Populations

Abstract

Both health care providers and health care receivers bring their own cultures to their interactions. Failure to incorporate culture into the medical decision-making process can lead to misdiagnoses not only when prevalence of conditions among certain cultural groups and idiosyncratic racial or ethnic responses to medication are not considered, but also where lack of knowledge about traditional remedies, understanding of illness and wellness, family dynamics, and neighborhood characteristics are not taken into account during the assessment and diagnostic phases of the physician–patient relationship. These types of errors can be avoided through the integration of cross-cultural education into the training of our current and future health care professionals at all levels of health care. The concept of cultural competence refers to an ongoing commitment to and institutionalization of appropriate practices and policies for diverse populations. Various models have been developed to educate medical professionals in the provision of culturally competent care at the individual and systems levels. Successful training programs must first identify factors contributing to health care disparities then address them via education. Such education opportunities include training on interpreter services, recruitment, mentoring and retention of diverse health care providers, and patient–provider communication skills. Implementing these educational programs requires individual and organizational buy-in and validated assessment tools for them to be truly effective.