Many countries are becoming more multicultural, and doctors are accepting patients from different socio-cultural backgrounds. Thus, there is an increasing need of intercultural communication between people. It is especially critical in the healthcare area since people discuss topics related to medicine, diseases, and even saving life. Effective doctor-patient interaction is associated with increased patient satisfaction, adherence to recommendations and outcomes, and improving health (Purnell, 2002). When the socio-cultural differences between patients and doctors are not studied and brought to practice, this can lead to patient dissatisfaction, non-compliance with recommendations, and harmful health consequences.
Previous efforts in building cultural competence have focused on teaching specific aspects of patient care within a particular culture. Indeed, this is useful in some situations because it helps having a common understanding of other people. However, sometimes this approach can lead to stereotypes and oversimplification of a culture. It is vital to remember that people can be extremely different even within one culture. Therefore, cultural competence evolved from assumptions about patients based on nationality to the implementation of patient-centered care principles (Jongen et al., 2018). It includes learning, empathy, responsiveness to the needs, values, ​​and preferences of patients.
Becoming multinational, the population of large countries expects an adequate culture-based, patient-centered approach to medical care. The study of the experience of forming future doctors’ cultural competence in higher medical educational institutions reveals problematic issues related to this. The first is the complexity of developing academic and methodological materials describing cultural health problems. The second is the question of whether the efforts of the actual disciplines of the humanitarian profile are sufficient to solve the assigned tasks (Douglas et al., 2018). Perhaps the specialized fields’ content also needs to be “saturated” with cross-cultural interaction’s contextual studies. In addition, the question is whether medical educators will be able to provide the necessary training for students in this area.
There are three main components of cultural competence to be developed in professionals. The first is knowledge about the aspects of intercultural interaction in the practice of medical care. The second is the possession of the relevant competencies and the readiness to demonstrate them. The third is the attitude to the phenomena that make up the essence of competence and the skill of activating competence (Kumar et al., 2019). These components, which require teachers’ close attention when planning courses, should form the basis for interdisciplinary integration of materials.
There is currently great interest in assessing the impact of educational initiatives on patient health. Research on cultural competence is still at an early stage. The cultural competence of doctors is not a panacea that can improve health and eliminate inequalities by itself. This is an indicator of their high socio-cultural competence and ability to provide highly qualified care to patients of different national cultures. Thus, it is necessary to study this issue along with basic scientific knowledge for the development of cultural sensitivity. It is also vital to apply a cultural approach in practice to fully experience how to communicate with different types of patients.
References
Douglas, M., Pacquiao, D., & Purnell, L. (2018). Global applications of culturally competent health care: Guidelines for practice. Springer.
Jongen, C., McCalman, J., & Bainbridge, R. (2018). Health workforce cultural competency interventions: A systematic scoping review. BMC Health Services Research, 18(1), 232.
Kumar, R., et al. (2019). Cultural competence in family practice and primary care setting. Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, 8(1), 1-4.
Purnell, L. (2002). The Purnell model for cultural competence. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 13(3), 193-196.