查看文章

Open Forum nicity, culture, or language proficiency”(7). Likewise,“the idea of cultural competency is an explicit statement that one-size-fits-all health care cannot meet the needs of an increasingly diverse American population”(8). Cultural competence operates at an individual level in the application of specific techniques and skills in the context of clinical encounters and at an institutional level in the promotion of organizational practices to meet the needs of diverse populations. Calls for cultural competence are rooted in the increasing diversity in the United States (7, 8). Changes in national demographic data are yielding changes in clinical populations. Clinicians are likely to treat patients who may have limited English-language proficiency, have different care-seeking behaviors, and hold different expectations for care (7). More broadly, there is increasing awareness of dramatic health disparities among ethnic …