Senior patients and doctors have a lot in common: Similar to how patients in some of the poorest and least-served populations feel abandoned by the healthcare system; many doctors are dealing with stress and tiredness in the wake of the epidemic and feel abandoned as well.
The highest suicide rates are among medical professionals, including nurses and doctors. Low-income older patients who are negatively impacted by the five social determinants of health also have high suicide rates.
Even if there are few similarities, having a mutual understanding and finding common ground may help doctors connect with and gain the trust of their patients and communities, which will assist the doctor-patient relationship.
However, in certain places, primary care doctors still have a difficult time tackling healthcare inequity, particularly when it comes to treating patients from different racial and ethnic origins.
Understanding and appreciating our differences is the first step in delivering culturally competent care. Increased patient respect and trust, increased community involvement and participation, and enhanced patient experiences all came about as a result.
What Is Culturally Aware Care?
Cultural awareness or competence is, essentially, meant to address the health disparities of patients who come from varied backgrounds. Doctors and healthcare systems can offer personalized care to all patients, regardless of their behaviors, values, and beliefs. This care should meet their cultural, social, and dialectal needs.
However, many PCPs lack the knowledge or skills to offer tailored services to their patients. Below, you’ll find the most common obstacles that prevent them from applying culturally aware care!
Common Obstacles to Culturally Aware Care
You can’t change anything without first knowing what’s wrong. A preliminary analysis of the current medical landscape is needed if we are to implement culturally aware care. With this in mind, let’s go over the most common obstacles to this form of care:
- Healthcare leadership and care teams are not diverse enough
- Systems that are poorly designed or work incorrectly and are unable to suit the demands of various patient populations
- Cultural sensitivity issues or misunderstandings
- Poor communication with patients from various cultural backgrounds
- Inability to get interpretation services
- Inadequate knowledge of healthcare inequalities among varied populations
How to Implement Culturally Aware Care?
First, let’s go over the many benefits of culturally aware care:
- Improves communication with culturally diverse patients
- Bolsters the patient-doctor relationship
- Builds trust between patient and doctor
- Ensures patient compliancy
- It lets PCPs to collect accurate medical information and provide personalized treatment to patients
There are two main ways you can implement culturally aware care:
- Cultural Humility Is Incorporated into Practice Through Provider Education
The promotion of long-lasting awareness and mutual understanding within hospital care teams is achieved by educating your employees or putting in place a training program to teach cultural competency.
This also entails collaborating with conventional healers, embracing dialects and culturally distinct values, and creating an organizational culture that promotes the inclusion of marginalized groups.
- Utilizing Technology and Engaging the Community
You can’t implement culturally aware care without…being aware of the culture of the population you serve. This can be achieved through surveys and demographic information.
It will expand your accessibility and help you meet all your patients’ needs effectively. Technology can also help you in collecting data about patient populations, which will further help you understand your patients’ needs.
The mission of Primary Medical Care Center is to reduce the racial and ethnic inequities in health that affect many of the most vulnerable elders in America. Offering patients the first-rate primary care they deserve, regardless of their race, ethnicity, socioeconomic level, or history, is the core mission of our firm.
Call us at (305) 751-1500 for more information!