Cultural Competence Training, Essay Example

Cultural competence training improves the experiences of hospital patients

The research question guiding this research is “Does cultural competence training improves the experiences of hospital patients?

In an attempt of addressing the research problem of this study, the research indicates the dynamic nature of the demographics, differences in language, ethnic background, race and the need to understand the core needs of the client in the United States. The researcher is also keen on the health inequities and disparities as a common trend owing to lack of funding training in the health industry. The need for appropriate skills among workers in this industry is seen as most appropriate way of achieving the objectives of this study in adapting to the needs of their clients. The researcher also addresses the issue of Cultural and linguistic competence as a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, as well as policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals to facilitate effective work in cross-cultural situations. Consideration of these issues enables the researcher to address the research problem the contribution of cultural competence training in improving the experiences of hospital patients.

The objectives of the study are determination of the best methods of increasing cultural competency for the benefit of hospital patients. The researcher is interested in the efficiency, equitability and effectiveness of public health agencies in dealing with cultural differences using their current methods and encouraging them to seek alternatives and productive approaches.

In answering the research question, the researcher has visited a variety of past literatures including the current studies on the aptitude of professionals in health care to tender the culturally diverse patient population. The literature also details the possibility of compromising the quality of services in a health care setting as a result of insufficient cultural understanding (Peiying, Goddard, Gribble & Pickard, 2012, p 61). The study also indicates the location of teaching hospitals low socioeconomic as well as culturally diverse areas and the contribution of this factor to the misconceptions of handling patients during their training. These misconceptions are attributed to stereotyping in addition to negative attitudes in as far as the patients are concerned. The literature review gives a significant contribution in answering the research question.

The expectations of the researcher involve identification of the possibility for a correlation between training of employees and the patient’s satisfaction with the treatment they received. This is achieved trough the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1:

Patients being served by an agency that has rules set in place to encourage empathy toward cultural differences will report a better experience

Hypothesis 2:

Organizations lead by management that places emphasis on the importance of cultural competency will be more aware of cultural difference will better serve their clientele

Hypothesis 3:

Frequently trained and educated employees will better serve culturally diverse populations

The researcher gave the following operational definitions along with measurement

1. patient satisfaction as the degree to which the individual regards a health care service or product, or the manner in which it is delivered by the provider, as useful, effective, or beneficial.
2. employee competence as “a sufficiency of means for the necessities and conveniences of

The research design applicable in this study is online survey involving questions about the importance of cultural competency in the organization. The questions cover general competency skills as suggested by literature and the possibility of incorporating open ended question. The researcher also considered basic demographic question such as race/ethnicity, gender, and age. The importance of the frequency of attending cultural competency training courses also featured in the survey. The measurements are based on a scale based on whether the participant strongly agrees or disagrees. The researcher makes use of a Likert-scale to determine respondents’ responses on wide range starting from satisfied to very dissatisfied and strongly agree to strongly disagree.

The research design is there exhaustive in identifying the important aspects that facilitate answering the research question.