Almost everybody has experienced this at one point or another. Have you ever been to your doctor’s office and did not quite understand what the provider s explaining to you, or are you a health? care employee who doesn’t always understand your patients? What do you believe the healthcare provider should do in these cases? More than ever before, healthcare professionals all over the United States are forced to deal with an immense number of different cultural diversities. Though many define diversity as cultural differences, diversity is more than that and applies to all the qualities that make a person different. Diversity requires us not only to learn, but know an individual’s differences in order to over come cross-cultural barriers in healthcare.
As cultures grow within the U.S. healthcare professionals should also grow in order to be able to help their patients. However, working in the healthcare field I have learned that healthcare professionals that decide to go in depth can discover that some of the behavior’s patients present with are actually due to cultural beliefs and values, which healthcare professionals should accommodate or preserve for future references. In order for all healthcare professionals to be diverse or culturally competent, they must first understand not only their views of the world but the patients view of the world itself while avoiding any stereotyping. In order to be able to achieve this competence of diversity in the healthcare they must be willing obtain cultural information and apply their knowledge to it.
According to the Society for Human Resource Management diversity is: “A broad definition of diversity ranges from personality and work style to all of the visible dimensions of diversity such as race, age, ethnicity or gender, to secondary influences such as religion, socioeconomics and education, to work diversities such as management and union, functional level and classification or proximity, distance to headquarters.” Diversity is a huge factor that we are striving for in many occupations around the world, but healthcare is one of the main professions that is becoming more diverse. Not only does it have many positive effects, it is providing the patients and workers with a sense of respect for each other.
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The patients are able to have a nurse or occupational therapists that understand where they are coming from. They might have the same morals or they might be in a similar situation as the patient, so they will be able to relate with the patient and understand them during difficult times. More companies are relating diversity into the workforce. Therefore, they are able to have a more successful business because of the many changes they are making to meet the needs of each individual.
