Table 6: Multicultural Perspectives In Providing Healthcare 1. Provides the opportunity for two persons—from different cultural perspectives—to disagree without one being right and the other wrong. 2. Tolerates and encourages a diverse and complex perspective. 3. Allows for more than one answer to a problem and for more than one way to arrive at a solution. 4. Recognizes that a failure to understand or accept another worldview can have detrimental consequences. 5. Takes a broad view of culture by recognizing the following variables: ethnographic (ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, language usage, ability, LGBTQ status); demographic (age, gender, gender identity, place of residence); status (social, economic, educational factors); and affiliations (formal memberships, informal networks). 6. Conceives of culture as complex when we count the hundreds or perhaps even thousands of culturally learned identities and affiliations that people assume at one time or another. 7. Conceives of culture as dynamic as one culturally learned identity replaces another in salience. 8. Uses methods and strategies and defines goals constituent with life expectations and values. 9. Views behaviors as meaningful when they are linked to culturally learned expectations and values. 10. Acknowledges as significant within-group differences for any particular ethnic or nationality group. 11. Recognizes that no one style of counseling—theory or school—is appropriate for all populations and situations. 12. Recognizes the part that societal structures play in patient’s lives. Note . Adapted in part from Gonzale et al., 1994 Self-Assessment Quiz Question #9 Multicultural perspectives in providing healthcare include all of the following EXCEPT: a. Provides opportunities for two persons from the same cultural perspective to disagree wherein one is right and the other is wrong. b. Takes a broad view of culture by recognizing variables.
c. Uses methods and strategies and defines goals constituent with life expectations. d. Views behaviors as meaningful when they are linked to culturally learned values. Mental and behavorial health professional roles
Culturally humble clinicians need to work toward understanding themselves and their patients within the context of privilege, oppression, and marginalization. A healthcare professional’s work engages patients as equal partners and addresses social inequalities and injustices on institutional and societal levels. The culturally humble healthcare professional sees their role in the provision of “therapeutic interventions” and addresses systems that serve to oppress marginalized communities to promote optimal well-being for patients, communities, and society. The healthcare professional can fulfill many roles. Because multicultural patient care is closely linked to the values of social justice, the need for a social justice orientation in patient care is apparent (Sue & Sue, 2021). Social justice counseling is defined as a philosophy and professional action to change societal conditions that eliminates disparities and provides equity of access and opportunity for disadvantaged or marginalized groups in areas such as education, healthcare, and employment which have a significant impact on quality of life (Sue & Sue, 2021). The social justice perspective requires healthcare professionals to assess and intervene with a perspective that balances the individual patient and the system(s) in which the patient is experiencing difficulties (Sue & Sue, 2021). The healthcare professional can act as advocate and actively speak with and, when necessary, for members of populations who are oppressed by the dominant society. These populations are confronted with institutional and societal oppression. Healthcare professionals can also be effective as “change agents” working to transform oppressive features of the institutional and societal environments. Rather than attributing Institutional and societal accountability: Social justice Healthcare delivery takes place within and reflects the larger culture. Although healthcare delivery can certainly aid in the wellness of patients, it does not occur in a vacuum. Wellness cannot be achieved when social injustice is present. Traditionally some healthcare professionals may have considered issues of social justice outside the realm of their practice;
patient problems to individual deficits, the healthcare professional works with the patient to identify external contributors to the problem and to remediate the consequences of oppression. Further, critical self-reflection in the context of cultural humility includes analysis of power differentials and how those differentials may play out on both individual and institutional levels (Fisher-Borne et al., 2015). Practicing with cultural humility suggests that healthcare professionals go beyond the confines of their offices to address differences in power and privilege that affect patients in very tangible ways. Mental and behavioral health professionals need to be self- aware and realize that patients react positively to healthcare professionals who display personal warmth, authenticity, credibility, and respect and who strive for human connectedness. Practicing with cultural humility provides the following. A promising alternative to cultural competence . . . as it makes explicit the interaction between the institution and the individual and the presence of systemic power imbalances. It further calls upon practitioners to confront imbalances rather than just acknowledge they exist. Cultural humility challenges us to ask difficult questions instead of reducing our clients to a set of norms we have learned in a training or course about “difference.” We believe that asking critical questions . . . challenge our own practice as well as our organizations and institutions and will provide a deeper well from which to approach individual and community change and effective long- term practice (Fisher-Borne et al., 2015, p. 177).
however, if social justice is relegated to a select few, oppression will flourish and efforts to heal communities will be blocked. The healthcare professional practicing within a social justice framework would not locate the problem within the individual but would look to the environmental factors that contribute to the actions and reactions of the individual (Sue & Sue, 2021).
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