PSYC 5304 Week 5 – Assignment: Examine Ethnic Disparity in Behavioral Healthcare

Introduction

Cultural sensitivity and diversity has proved important to healthcare organization in the recent past. It aids in improving retention and minimizing the costs related to employee turnover rate. A workplace that has embraced diversity and inclusivity tends to have employees who are more likely to remain loyal when they feel appreciated and respected for their work contribution (Harrison et al., 2019). This, in turn, encourages mutual respect among employees who treasure cultural diversity. An organization that fully embraces cultural diversity provides a platform for employees to bond and exercise unity across the business. In the contemporary world, everyone’s preference for their ideal workplace is one that fully embraces cultural diversity. The wide range of experience and knowledge that a diverse workplace offers can help advance problem-solving skills, leading to productivity. The creation of a cultural diversity training course in the workplace is important since it will help increase cultural awareness, communication, and knowledge. The main objective of a successful diversity training program is to develop a positive work environment by helping employees acknowledge and accept differences among workers. The cultural diversity training course is very important in the working environment because it helps develop skills hence increase productivity. Implementing cultural diversity training in an organization results in many challenges, especially since not everyone is ready to embrace change to accommodate others.

Diversity Issues in CCM

Various diversity issues have been defining the quality of healthcare delivery within the healthcare system. Some of these issues include language and communication, gender equality, ethnic and cultural differences, acceptance and respect and accommodation of beliefs. As healthcare organization strives to offer competent care to all people from diverse backgrounds, it tends to be cautious on ways of managing these diversity issues. The fight for inclusion and diversity has been effective in the US for the last three decades. The laws and policies ratify by the US government aim at meeting the needs of the people at every sector. Training cultural diversity among professionals in healthcare has been important in reducing employee conflicts and improving healthcare outcome. The main goals of training employees on cultural diversity is to allow every employee understand cultural issues that affect the operation of the health care sector. Besides, the need to embrace diversity has also been a major goal in training employees on inclusivity (Henderson et al., 2018). Studies have so far contended that the inclusion of diversity in healthcare has effectively assisted in meeting patients need. The need to improve care for all patients has compelled healthcare organizations to hire competent healthcare workers from diverse backgrounds. The diverse nature of the human resource in healthcare has led to increased adherence to cultural competency.

Language and Communication

The first issue affecting the community is the effect of language and communication. Most people in the community have diverse ethnic background implying that English language is not their first languages. Solution of the language and communication barrier problem would lead to an effective communication between the patient and the professional that further lead to effective care. Language and communication issues aids in identifying, esteems, and values all cultures and assimilates those values into the system (Leggett & Price, 2020). A culturally competent organization can address the needs of varied groups of people such as using a common language. For instance, a culturally relevant organization monitors the demographics of the community they serve after a specific period to track the diversity in language and communication and use the information to determine the strategic planning and outreach arrangement. One of the reasons that compel healthcare organizations to adhere to cultural competence is the need to deliver effective care and increase the quality of care to patients who can only speak the native languages. Practicing cultural competence requires a system that can personalize healthcare regarding linguistic and cultural differences (Henderson et al., 2018). Again, it requires an understanding of the potential effect that cultural differences have on healthcare delivery.

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Gender Equality

Increased cases of gender inequality also result into a disjointed community where men and women fight to secure position in the society. These issues tend to affect the interaction between people from diverse groups. In healthcare organization, it does not allow employees to learn the ways of operation of other cultures and appreciate their beliefs in association with the common goal. As a result, the training will be important because it represents a good opportunity for employees to grow their knowledge base and improve their job skills to become more effective within the organization. Despite the cost of training for employees, the expected outcome of the training will be seen on the improved performance. Employee training program will help improve the knowledge and skills of employees to match the various changes in the industry (Harrison et al., 2019). These improvements will positively affect the productivity of workers, which can reduces issues related to cultural diversity. Again, training programs can also help prepare employees on effective use of the resources at the company to improve patient outcome and learn from each other.

Ethnic and Cultural Differences

Employee training on ethnic and cultural differences is an important part of community program that each nurse and patient needs to meet desired outcome. These strategies allows healthcare organizations to comply with the missions and visions of the organization. For training to transfer to the workplace, it’s important that all employees receive a consistent message that focus on employee diversity examples. In fact, consistency is one of the main benefits of online training. It is also important to ensure that managers, trainers, and mentors are delivering a consistent ethnic and cultural differences message during on-the-job training (Harrison et al., 2019). The interaction would as well improve communication skills during the training sessions and make it possible to work together to meet the desired goal. The trainers need to understand the issue of ethnic and cultural differences to have a better choice of words to develop an effective relationship with such a team. However, through the constant interaction with the team can be important in finding ways of managing ethnic and cultural differences by incorporating the feelings of other people within the team. This would as well develop a common interest within during the training.

Acceptance and Respect

Acceptance and respect is a diversity issue that affect the relationship between employees in a work setup. The employees need to tolerate each other by accepted g and respecting the beliefs of other employees. This would become the initial stage of mutual understand between the community and the surrounding healthcare organization. Training employees on acceptance and respect would be effective in evaluating the need to accept variation of cultures in a community. So, after finishing the training process, the clinic expects to see its employees respecting the cultural beliefs of other employees (Sharifi et al., 2019). In a community tat houses the employees hired in a healthcare organization, there are issues of diverse beliefs. For instance most of the Africa–American have a different beliefs from the white and they would feel offended if another party does not value their beliefs. Such issues might lead to conflict that affect the smooth delivery of healthcare services.

Accommodation of Beliefs

Training employees on the issue of accommodating beliefs goes beyond individual respect to enhance information sharing between the community and professionals. Training on cultural diversity at the clinic will be significant for the success of the business in numerous ways. A strategic plan adopted for the training of clinic employees allows organizations to foresee their future and to prepare accordingly by balancing on emotions of employees towards respecting beliefs of each other. Through this diversity issue, the healthcare institution can anticipate certain unfavorable scenarios before they happen and take necessary precautions to avoid them. With a strong strategic plan, the organization can be proactive rather than merely reacting to situations as they arise. Being proactive allows organizations to keep up with the ever-changing trends in the market and always stay one step ahead of the competition (Harrison et al., 2019). strategic plan helps to define the direction in which an organization must travel, and aids in establishing realistic objectives and goals that are in line with the vision and mission charted out for it.

Addressing Diversity Issues

The increase in issues of diversity in healthcare organization affect the ability of the organization to meet its desired patient outcome. Therefore, to avoid such cases, there is need to the healthcare organization to train its staff of cultural diversity issues. The selected strategies allows employees to appreciate the importance of the diversity in the healthcare organization (Sharifi et al., 2019). Creating a more diverse workplace can yield a number of benefits for your business. Companies that are racially and ethnically diverse regularly outperform the industry. Various studies found that companies in the top quarter for racial, ethnic, and gender diversity were 35% and 15% respectively, more likely to have financial returns above their national industry medians. Therefore, when employees are aware of each other’s unique traits and backgrounds, they can more easily find ways to use these varied strengths to accomplish a common goal.

Cultural Sensitivity Issues

Cultural sensitivity are also issues affecting the interaction among employee in a work place setting. Some of these issues include religion, national origin, sexual orientation and disability. One of the ways to improve cultural sensitivity is by interacting more with diverse groups. Fixing all employees to working with people from the diverse group would help them learn the beauty of diversity. The interaction with people from diverse groups would not only allow me to learn the ways of operation of other cultures but also appreciate their beliefs in association with the common goal. Another way of improving cultural diversity skills is by attending diversity-focused conferences (Sharifi et al., 2019). These conferences can evaluate the cultural and ethnic diversity of the people they serve to enable the recognition of the needs of cultural diversity within a health organization. The clinic can as well enroll in programs for mentoring minority women professionals and appreciate the need for a diverse human workforce. The main of will be to enlarge the pool of qualified talent for superior stature positions historically closed due to the lack of knowledge of career prospects.

Religion

The CCM community is dominated by Christians but it does not mean that other religions are not found within the community. Allowing the employees to accept the diversity in religion allows the organization to identify any gap o the issues of cultural sensitivity in the region. These gaps should be analyzed, prioritized, and turned into the organization’s objectives. The ultimate goal is to bridge the gap between current and desired performance/knowledge through the development of a platform that has business goals at its core (Sharifi et al., 2019). While other religions might look funny to other people, they have an effect in the healthcare setting. For example, some of the patients in healthcare setting would only accept Christian or Muslim nurses to attend to their needs. Such situation would be effective if the organization is able to embrace all religions because the community also have potential patients with diverse beliefs in religion.

Significance of Addressing Diversity and Sensitivity Issues

The performance registered by the employees would be effective in measuring the desired outcome. Just like anything else in life, a clinic need to be able to measure the effectiveness of its training in order to know if it’s meeting its goals. Various evaluation metrics can be used to do this. In general, these metrics can be divided into two categories: learner outcomes and process measures (Amarneh & Muthuveloo, 2020). Learner outcomes are what the clinic is hoping to achieve with the training, such as increased productivity or better customer service. Process measures track things like how much they learned and how engaged they were in the training. There are a number of different evaluation metrics it can use to measure learner outcomes, such as: test scores, course completion rates, job satisfaction, and task performance.

Solution to cultural sensitivity Issues

The diversity among healthcare providers and patients can affect communication in one way or another. This could also affect decisions made by clinicians and patients concerning treatment. While cultural competence affects how healthcare providers treat their patients, it could also define the poor interpretation of emotions that would result in poor patient treatment (Ahmed et al., 2018). For instance, a healthcare professional may interpret a patient’s silence as their lack of interest in receiving a particular treatment or care. In such cases, the healthcare professional may not order any diagnostic test on the patient that could result in a patient complication. Such thinking may erupt while, in the real sense, the patient’s silence shows their sign of respect to healthcare workers. In this case, the clinician would treat the patient unfairly because they failed to understand the patient’s cultural beliefs.

PSYC 5304 Week 5 – Assignment: Examine Ethnic Disparity in Behavioral Healthcare References

Harrison, R., Walton, M., Chauhan, A., Manias, E., Chitkara, U., Latanik, M., & Leone, D. (2019). What is the role of cultural competence in ethnic minority consumer engagement? An analysis in community healthcare. International Journal for Equity in Health, 18(1), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-019-1104-1

Henderson, S., Horne, M., Hills, R., & Kendall, E. (2018). Cultural competence in healthcare in the community: A concept analysis. Health & Social Care in the Community, 26(4), 590-603. https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12556

Sharifi, N., Adib-Hajbaghery, M., & Najafi, M. (2019). Cultural competence in nursing: A concept analysis. International journal of nursing studies, 99, 103386. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2019.103386

Ahmed, S., Siad, F. M., Manalili, K., Lorenzetti, D. L., Barbosa, T., Lantion, V., … & Santana, M. J. (2018). How to measure cultural competence when evaluating patient-centred care: a scoping review. BMJ open, 8(7), e021525. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-021525

Amarneh, S., & Muthuveloo, R. (2020). Human resource management practices and person-organization fit towards nurses’ job satisfaction. Management Science Letters, 10(14), 3197-3206. http://dx.doi.org/10.5267/j.msl.2020.6.019

Bhatti, M. K., Shah, N., & Abbasi, Z. (2021). An Investigation Of Training And Development Towards Employee Performance: An Empirical Approach From Nurses. Multicultural Education, 7(10). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5571012

Rawashdeh, A. M., & Tamimi, S. A. (2019). The impact of employee perceptions of training on organizational commitment and turnover intention: An empirical study of nurses in Jordanian hospitals. European Journal of Training and Development. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJTD-07-2019-0112