Purpose of the Article
This article seeks to enhance the dental professional’s awareness of the importance of personal cultural values, practices, beliefs, language, and health behaviors in meeting the dental care needs of minority groups.
Findings and Conclusion
The article found out enhanced cultural competence in individual cultural values, beliefs, health behaviors, and language was a significant factor for dental professionals in meeting the dental care needs of minority groups. For the practitioners to become culturally competent, teaching institutions should adopt suitable teaching methods within dental schools. According to Behar-Horenstein et al. (2017), dental schools should engage the students in experiential learning to allow the teaching of didactic data while promoting an in-depth understanding of diverse populations. Besides, the article also recommends culturally competent school infrastructure and resources to support faculty training. All dentists graduating from different institutions should be culturally aware of the beliefs and values of various groups through the use of federally qualified health centers, the adoption of public health dentistry principles, and engagement in interprofessional community projects. The authors thus conclude that culturally competent professionals could help understand the weaknesses and strengths of the US healthcare systems, have incredible problem management skills, and enhance the overall recognition of oral healthcare disparities.
Personal Thoughts
One of the crucial lessons from this article is that people from minority populations have different experiences within dental clinics due to dentists’ low levels of cultural competence. The cultural differences between the minority and majority groups can influence healthcare at all levels, including interaction and communication with the providers, outcomes, health disparities, and experiences with different illnesses. Hence, the lack of a culturally competent workforce can affect the quality of care given to patients from minority ethnic groups. The findings of this article are vital since they equip the educational stakeholders with different teaching methods that the institutions can use to produce culturally competent individuals.
References
Behar-Horenstein, L. S., Warren, R. C., Dodd, V. J., & Catalanotto, F. A. (2017). Addressing oral health disparities via educational foci on cultural competence. American journal of public health, 107(S1), S18-S23.