CONCLUSION
When working with patients from diverse backgrounds, healthcare professionals must be willing to continuously look at personal dimensions of diversity and at how those dimensions affect their worldview and their view of their patients. Thus, mental and behavioral health professionals enter the professional relationship with a solid base of self-knowledge and a continuous commitment to critical self-reflection. They also enter into patient interactions with an open mind and curiosity regarding their patients’ lived experience, and they do not pretend to know or understand each patient’s unique combination of facets of diversity and do not assume that the patient will behave or believe in any particular way based on those facets of diversity. In fact, the culturally humble healthcare professional “cultivate(s) openness to the other person by regulating one’s natural tendency to view one’s beliefs, values, and worldview as superior, indeed, the culturally humble healthcare professional strives to cultivate a growing awareness that one is inevitably limited in knowledge and understanding of patients’ backgrounds” (Hook et al., 2016, p. 152). This stance of openness and equality provides an environment for healthcare professionals to enter into Resources ● Cultural Humility: People, Principles, Practices https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Mbu8bvKb_U&list =PL879555ABCCED8B50 ● National Center for Cultural Competence https://nccc.georgetown.edu ● Project Implicit https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/aboutus.html
respectful and equitable partnerships with patients. Moreover, the culturally humble clinician considers how societal structures in the U.S. serve to oppress some individuals and groups while empowering other individuals and groups. Patients are affected by the inequality within the U.S. They are affected by living in a society where racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and discrimination based on a variety of other diverse identities, including disability and gender identity, are expressed in a multitude of ways. This discrimination obstructs access to resources and opportunities and impedes interpersonal relationships. The power imbalances within society and institutions that are experienced by patients require the culturally humble healthcare professional to take an active role in correcting those imbalances. Cultural humility challenges healthcare professionals to ask difficult questions and encourages them not to reduce patients to a preconceived set of cultural norms that have been learned in trainings about diversity and difference (Foronda et al., 2016). Finally, the culturally humble healthcare professional will engage in lifelong learning that supports effective practice.
● The Office of Minority Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov ● Think Cultural Health https://www.thinkculturalhealth.hhs.gov
WORKS CITED https://uqr.to/CulturalHumilityinBH
Book Code: PCUS1526
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