The Georgetown University Health Policy Institute has a brief article. CULTURAL COMPETENCE IN HEALTH CARE: IS IT IMPORTANT FOR PEOPLE WITH CHRONIC CONDITIONS? This article quickly and easily poses the salient cultural issues in the provision of care. If you wanted a module on cultural competency, a paper such as this one might be useful to frame the conversation. The paper suggested common strategies to improve patient-provider interaction and institutionalize changes in a health care setting. https://hpi.georgetown.edu/cultural/
Think Cultural Health Clearinghouse (2013)—A Physician’s Practical Guide to Culturally Competent Care. A Physician’s Practical Guide to Culturally Competent Care is designed for physicians, PAs and NPs (though they only talk about MDs). It focuses on increasing awareness of racial and ethnic disparities in health and about the need for health care systems to accommodate increasingly diverse patient populations. The e-learning program offers case studies as illustration. It requires registration, but is free of charge. It seemed a little superficial, but may be useful for you. Here is the link: https://cccm.thinkculturalhealth.hhs.gov/
Industry Collaboration Effort (n.d.)— Better Communication, Better Care: Provider Tools to Care for Diverse Populations. This toolkit seemed very useful for providers. It offered information on interaction with a diverse patient base: encounter tips for providers and their clinical staff, a mnemonic to assist with patient interviews, help in identifying literacy problems, and an interview guide for hiring clinical staff who have an awareness of diversity issues. Click here to review.
- Communication across language barriers: tips for locating and working with interpreters, common signs and common sentences in many languages, language identification flashcards, and language skill self-assessment tools.
- Understanding patients from various cultural backgrounds: tips for talking with a wide range of people about sex, pain management across cultures, and information about different cultural backgrounds.
- References and resources.
Care of LGBT persons. There are several useful resources that might increase awareness or provide tools for NP students. The National LGBT Health Education Center from the Fenway Institute also offers an easy to read 16-page resource on Providing Affirmative Care for Patients with Non-binary Gender Identities. From my reading so far, this resource seems to offer the most useful information for providers. Here is the link:
Care of transgender persons. WPATH, the World Association of Transgender Health has compiled all versions of the Standards of Care into one document. The cost of the compilation to non-members is US $45.00. Many sites provide guidelines for transgender care at no cost. The UCSF Center for Excellence in Transgender Care has comprehensive guidelines for primary care providers. Visit http://transhealth.ucsf.edu/protocols
This project is/was supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under grant number U77HP03022, for the WWAMI Area Health Education (WWAMI AHEC) Program Office and its five regional Centers in the total amount of $740,000 for the 2021-2022 fiscal year (with a 1:1 total match of $740,000 from non-federally funded governmental sources). This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.
