Summary
Culturally sensitive healthcare has been described as one that considers the feelings, attitudes, and circumstances of groups of patients with the same race, ethnicity, language, nationality, religious, and cultural heritage. It is also the kind of care that is delivered according to the client’s preferences and expectations (Smaradottir & Fensli, 2019). Patient-centered and culturally sensitive healthcare has its foundation in meeting the sick person’s desire, modifying the provider’s behavior and attitude towards their satisfaction, and displaying medical-care center policies. It also involves showing the physical environment features of the health facility and approaches that culturally diverse individuals can acknowledge as indicators for respecting their values (Myer, 2020). Patient-centered health care conceptualizes the client-provider partnership as mutual, places the ailing at the center of care, and focuses on their empowerment.
Therefore, this care is unique because it focuses on cultural diversity rather than the opinions of the caregivers. The staff behavior, attitude, medical-care environment characteristics, and policies should be culturally sensitive to the patients’ views (Smaradottir & Fensli, 2019). When the healthcare system empowers its clients to share their opinions on culturally sensitive areas, it manifests patient-centered attention. The care providers should be responsive to the sick person’s views. This is through displaying attitudes and conducts that are traditionally sensitive and offering a clinical environment and policies that the patients identified as crucial in the care of the socially diverse population.
Thus, client-based and socially sensitive healthcare improves individual behaviors and outcomes for both the minority and majority of the target populations. Tucker et al. (2017) developed the patient-centered and culturally sensitive healthcare model. These approaches explain the relationship between the two aspects, the well-being outcomes, client’s adherence to treatment, and health promotion behavior among clients. The framework advocates for focus group discussion among adults on socially complex healthcare. It also states that the data obtained from the discussions can be used to develop an inventory for assessing the extent to which the provided care is culturally sensitive to the patients.
Moreover, the model can guide caregivers who want to offer traditionally sensitive healthcare to support health promotion and reduce disparities among culturally diverse patients (Tucker et al., 2017). Studies have shown that the clients’ satisfaction has a positive association with the behavior and the attitude of the provider (Fagerström, 2017). The personnel’s willingness to deliver health information, and act in a sensitive and concerned manner promotes positive results (Henderson et al., 2018). Research has found that low adherence to the treatment among racial and ethnically diverse patients has mainly been contributed by a limited level of cultural competence among the caregivers (Tucker et al., 2017). Therefore, most healthcare professionals lack effective and culturally sensitive communication.
Thus, the perceived social sensitivity to health promotion activities and interventions is related to the effectiveness of the interventions. This paper discusses a case scenario whereby the ailing persons in Dallas United Hospital have evidence of decreased client approval regarding patients’ preferences and values in relation to cultural competence. To curb this decline, the essay will converse a plan for patient-centered care and cultural competence. It will offer adjustment to the hospital’s mission and methods for interdisciplinary collaboration.
Adjustment of the Hospital Mission
Our mission at the Dallas United Hospital is to be a provider of high-quality and patient-focused healthcare that is accessible, cost-effective and can meet the community’s needs and cultural values. In addition to the former core values, people, quality, and service excellence will be supplemented. The essential standards are based on respect for individuals, patients, and the entire United Hospital. The undertaking will foster cultural awareness and competence among the staff. The mission statement will be printed and displayed in all the wards, the clinic, at the gate, and any other significant hospital areas. This will act as a reminder to both the staff and patients about their responsibilities and obligations.
Patient-Centered Care Interventions
The departmental and broad hospital aims; setting goals and objectives inspire the employees to achieve them. They act as a motivation to both individuals and the whole remedial team. Medical-care is entirely goal-oriented; thus, the facility will create objectives around the hospital consumer assessment of healthcare providers and systems (HCAHPS) response for each department. Every section will set its scores and work towards achieving them. All the 27 questions of the HCAPS will be incorporated into the answers (van der Heide et al., 2017). A team of experts will be tasked with the formulation of the questions by the end of next week.
The hospital will reward the group whose HCAHPS scores meet their target when goals are set. Remunerating those who achieve their objectives acts as a motivator to improve quality and makes them work extra hard with aim of achieving the hospital’s mission (Fagerström, 2017). When the employees meet the eight principles of patient-centered care and the HCAHPS goals, the hospital will be setting examples by recompensing them.
Educating the staff on patient-centered care and cultural competence – at times, people forget their roles and responsibility as far as quality is concerned (Tucker et al., 2017). The clinic will hold weekly seminars for all healthcare providers to remind them of its aims and mission. The facility will teach the eight principles of patient-centered care and aspects of cultural competence to serve our population, which is a minority group. It will also emphasize the negatives of holding blames over one another instead of taking full responsibility for client care and being team players.
Setting clear guidelines – the best way to ensure that the staff follows standard operating procedures and policy is to make them easy to understand (Tucker et al., 2017). The hospital will write all the eight principles of patient-centered care in each department and provide examples of how to achieve them. For example, one of the pillars of health care involves approving family in making decisions, educating them, and offering patients security. Client comfort means alleviating physical pain, such as using analgesics.
Cultural Competence Interventions
Perform cultural competence assessment of each staff – this will determine each team’s strengths and weaknesses in working with the minority group. The hospital will be assessing the cultural competence of the workforce three times a year, and the results will be used to adjust accordingly. It will also train all the employees on social competency and give them certificates of participation and training. The exercise will happen this year to all the groups who do not have the credentials. For the new personnel, the activity will be taking place within the first month of deployment. This will improve the awareness, knowledge, and skills of dealing with diverse cultural entities. The center will also keep its staff updated on the current issues about traditional abilities through seminars and continuous medical education.
Improvement of the communication and language barriers – the facility will increase the number of translators in each department to 10 people to curb miscommunication due to language. It will encourage the staff to learn the local dialect by sponsoring their classes. The team will also educate the workforce on gestures, written summaries, and pictures to improve communication among the healthcare workers. This will promote understanding between the providers and clients and enhance care as per the patient’s values and preferences.
The medical center will hold meetings for direct interaction between the providers and the community leaders, and adults. The forums’ goal will be to learn the values, beliefs, and public needs to serve patients better. The assemblies will be held every three months when the healthcare personnel is aware of the society’s requirements and help them according to their values and preferences, which will also promote respect for their culture.
Policy Changes
The hospital healthcare policies will be adjusted to include patient-centered care for multi-morbidity patients. It will involve care customization in regards to the client’s needs, inclinations, ideas, and resources. The maintenance will consist of co-clients and co-providers from the family perspective, it will also involve integration and coordination of care. The policy change will include using these three strategies, the creation of partners, an education plan, and reviews of the community’s demographics (Myer, 2020). The clinic will collaborate with the immediate population through community leaders, the director of health services, the stakeholders, and Dallas’s staff. The partnership’s goal will be to assess the hospital’s policies on cultural competence and patient-centered care. Thus, this will lead to educational opportunities specific to healthcare.
The next step will be to educate the healthcare workers and the community on the proposed changes and the reasons for the difference. The hospitals will involve experts who are non-partisan to communicate the alterations and the motive for the modifications. The best ways of expressing the adjustments will be through public forums, campaigns, posters in the hospital, and the public to involve cultural competence in the community.
With the policy changes made by the experts, the hospital will review the community’s characteristics, such as demographics. It will also assess how the transformation will affect the community (van der Heide et al., 2017). The facility will again ensure that the immediate population understands the consequences of the transition and why it has to be a part of the process. The changes will be done to incorporate the community’s values and cultural preferences and improve patient-focused care.
Physical and Fiscal Resources
The physical resources involved in this plan comprise tools used in the training and evaluation of the project. The materials include posters on policy changes, flyers, and books on patient-centered care and cultural competence. Thus, this will have some financial implications for the hospital. Other physical resources include gifts for the departments that meet their HCAHPS goals. The hospital will use its seminar rooms, therefore, there will be no rental charges for the training venues. The physical resources include the hiring of the trainers of the healthcare workers and policy change experts. It will also have allowances for the community leaders and other stakeholders who will be participating in these social forums. There will be other necessities such as refreshments in all the training and meetings, and the hospital will source ways of providing all these resources.
Evaluation
The hospital will evaluate the changes and the measures earlier mentioned on improving cultural competence and patient-centered care. The assessment will take place three times a year. It will be done through the HCAHPS tool and cultural competence assessment tools for the patients. The policy changes will be evaluated after a year to see if they met the purpose. Individual staff appraisal will also be part of the evaluation process. The appraisal forms will include aspects of patient-focused care and cultural sensitivity. Through this plan, there will be an increase in patient satisfaction.
References
Henderson, S., Horne, M., Hills, R., & Kendall, E. (2018). Cultural competence in healthcare in the community: A concept analysis. Health & Social Care in the Community, 26(4), 590-603. Web.
Myer, C. R. (2020). Promoting population health: Nurse advocacy, policy making, and use of media. The Nursing Clinics of North America, 55(1), 11-20. Web.
Smaradottir, B. F., & Fensli, R. W. (2019). Patient experiences and digital involvement in patient-centered care models. Context-Sensitive Health Informatics: Sustainability in Dynamic Ecosystems, 265, 181-185. Web.
Tucker, C. M., Roncoroni, J., Wippold, G., Wall, W., & Marsiske, M. (2017). Validation of an inventory for providers to self-assess their engagement in patient-centered, culturally sensitive health care. Journal of Patient Experience, 4(3), 129-137. Web.
van der Heide, I., Snoeijs, S. P., Boerma, W., Schellevis, F. G., Rijken, M. P., & Richardson, E (2017). How to strengthen patient-centredness in caring for people with multimorbidity in Europe? Denmark: European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.