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8 Steps You Can Take To Enhance Your Skills
In Cross-cultural Health Care
Adapted from Doc-for-Tots (www.docsfortots.org)
1. Participate in a free online CME course on effective cross-cultural health care that uses rigorous study designs, well-described interventions and measurable objectives that are linked to process and outcome variables.
A Physicians Practical Guide to Culturally Competent Care- CME credit
Culture And Health Care: An E-Learning Course- CME Credit
2. Learn more about strategies to prevent health disparities, and educate yourself on the different types of disparities that affect your patients.
Minority Health and Health Disparities
Provider’s Guide to Quality and Culture
3. Do a self assessment of your awareness around culturally competent care and identify opportunities for improvement.
Cultural Competence Assessment (.pdf)
4. Employ enhanced communication strategies during patient / family interactions using the LEARN mnemonic, interviewing techniques that are effective in eliciting cultural beliefs and social influences impacting decision making. These techniques enhance the patient provider relationship. (to learn more click here)
Listen with empathy and understanding of the patient's perception of the problem.
Explain your perceptions of the problem.
Acknowledge and discuss the differences and similarities.
Recommend treatment.
Negotiate agreement.
Elois Ann Berlin and William C. Fowkes Jr., A Teaching Framework for Cross-cultural Health Care. The Western Journal of Medicine , 1983, 139(6), 934
5. Practice your evolving skills using web-based cases and scenarios by going to The Provider’s Guide to Quality and Culture. (click here)
6. Become familiar with CLAS standards (National Standards on Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services) and assess how your practice measures up.
A listing of the 14 CLAS standards
14 CLAS Standards (.pdf)
The full 139 page report
National Standards on Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (.pdf)
7. Stay current on policy and community-based strategies related to children's health and advocacy efforts around eliminating health disparities, and participate in the process. Periodically visit the websites devoted to helping you stay current:
The federal Office of Minority Health:
http://www.omhrc.gov/
The University of Michigan Program for Multicultural Health:
http://www.med.umich.edu/multicultural/index.htm
Docs for Tots:
http://www.docsfortots.org/default.asp
National Health Policy Training Alliance for Communities of Color:
http://www.healthpolicyalliance.org/
8. Observe the barriers families in your practice face in accessing medical care in your community. These could include time constraints and office hours, poverty, and financial difficulties, as well as problems accessing hospitals for non-emergency care. Take time to reflect upon the multiple factors influencing their access to health care and to their well-being. Is there something your practice could do to help?
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