Cultural Competence Is About Effective Care
Posted on November 1, 2016 by Healthy Baby Network in Uncategorized
When a patient doesn’t follow their doctor’s orders or show up for a doctor’s appointment, we think of them as a ‘bad patient.’ However, when a customer doesn’t return to a store or purchase a product, we wonder what didn’t they like about the product? Was the store in a bad location? Did they get poor customer service?
This year, Healthy Baby Network’s conference is reframing how we think about the patient experience. Who is a ‘bad patient?’ What can we do differently to help that patient achieve optimal health?
For the families that Healthy Baby Network works with, there is often a cultural gap between the patient and the provider. Whether linguistically, socioeconomically, or racially, patients and providers often come from different backgrounds. This makes it even easier for an ‘us and them’ mentality to take hold. When the patient is the ‘other,’ their behavior is easy to write off as ‘bad,’ instead of asking if there was something the provider could have done differently to work with that patient. We dedicated this year’s conference to cultural competence training in order to help providers bridge that gap and learn effective techniques for working with diverse populations.
Cultural competence is about effective care.
For providers to successfully help patients overcome barriers to wellness, they need to communicate effectively and be knowledgeable about where their patient is coming from. Hidden cultural differences can mean a patient doesn’t take his/her medication properly, or doesn’t open up and share crucial information that is key to diagnosis. The result is patient outcomes are worse when there is a lack of cultural parity between doctors and patients. At Healthy Baby Network, we know the providers who work with our patient population are passionate about patient outcomes and work their hardest to help families. We conceived this training to help dedicated providers achieve excellence in cultural competence so that our families can experience excellence in care.
Join us on Thursday, November 10 from 8:00am to 5:00pm at the DoubleTree Hotel for our free annual conference, “You Had Me (Or Lost Me) At Hello.” For more information and to register, click here!
Written by Lauren S. Deutsch, Esq., Executive Director of Healthy Baby Network
About Healthy Baby Network
At Healthy Baby Network, we are dedicated to giving babies a healthy start in life. Through data, health planning, and creating social support for mothers, we are transforming our community baby by baby.