Health Care Disparities: A Cultural Analysis

The thought of health care is something that anyone would think is simple enough. The first thought of nursing is caring for the basic needs of mankind. Since, every human contains pretty much the same physical makeup the care of one and all has been perceived as being the same. The biased notion that patient care is not individualized but the same across the board is false due to the diversity in our world. Cultural has become another aspect that affects patient care. It is quoted in the article titled Cultural Competence and Health Care Disparities: Key Perspectives the authors quote in their article that cultural competence has gained attention from health care policy makers, providers, insurers, and educators as a strategy to improve quality …show more content…
The care of different races required cultural competence to deliver the best quality of care for each individual. In the past the care was straight forward without patient input or involvement. The physician would be the authoritative figure dictating care without accounting for anything else but the basic principles of patient care. The downfall to this type of care blinded the healthcare provider to the patient’s culture on their ideas of how to care for their health issues at hand. With this knowledge now of open mindedness on cultures effects on patient care a development of an unobtrusive way to find out about patients culture. This knowledge enhanced to make care plan more patient centered. The care provider had to change their whole thought process to accommodate this evolution in care. In an article titled Patient Centeredness, Cultural Competence and Healthcare Quality the author’s emphasis a quote from Lipkin in 1984 which states “practitioners who are patient centered have specific knowledge, attitudes, and skills” (Somnath Saha, Mary Catherine Beach, Lisa A. Cooper, 2008). Nowadays, the process of understanding the patient needs begins the minute the healthcare provider's eyes are laid upon them. Nurses are designed to observe and use various techniques of communication to aide in discoveries to help evaluate health issues as well as emotional wellbeing. Authors …show more content…
So, arisen was another dilemma of changing the minds of healthcare providers to change their thinking to accommodate the multitude of cultures that now resides in every corner of this world. The importance of cultural competence perked the interest of insurance providers. The realization that delivering patient centered care with the emphasis on cultural competence would prevent continued visits to the hospital sounded like a dream come true. The authors write in their article ….the New York State Department of Health...33 million per year graduate medical Education Reform Incentive Pool to reward residency programs that provide 8 hours of cultural competence training to at least 80% of residents (Joseph R. Betancourt, Alexander R. Green, J. Emilio Carrillo, and Elyse R. Park, 2005). The effort to raise awareness and accommodate cultural competence has become an issue that is more of a necessity to provide care then the past. To be a healthcare provider in this time cultural competence has become part of the training process in this field. The authors write in their article ….among close to 8,000 graduate medical educational programs surveyed in the United States, 50.7 percent offered cultural competence training in 2003-2004 (Joseph R. Betancourt, Alexander R. Green, J. Emilio Carrillo, and Elyse R. Park, 2005). Cultural competence has come a long way from the past not