Cultural Competence: Issues and Benefits in Healthcare Delivery Professor Zoya Vinokur MS, RT(R)(M), Tetiana Grygoruk, Amina Shahbaz and Fahameda Hassan DEPARTMENT OF RADIOLOGIC TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICAL IMAGING INSTRUCTIONS: Insert text in text boxes as indicated on the template. You can modify color, background, font, font size, etc. by using PowerPoint features noted in the tabs. You can add borders around text boxes and you can add lines or other graphics where desired. To add more text boxes, you can copy an existing one and move it to the desired location. You can add any graphic by dragging it onto the slide or by copying/pasting it. Be sure that your graphic has high dots per inch. Images/graphics must be cited if not original work. Use Sans Serif fonts for Titles, labels and section headers. Use Serif fonts for text in text boxes. CONTENT: *Introduction, Background, and/or Abstract (a place to quickly summarize your topic and trigger your audience’s interest). Usually in narrative, paragraph format. *Materials and Methods or Process (a place to describe your process and what led to your results). Using bullet points can be a helpful way to present information. *Results (the place where the results of your experiment are explained). Using bullet points can be a helpful way to present information. *Conclusions or Discussion (the place where you explain why your results are conclusive and provide the reader with a short but solid justification of your hypothesis). Usually in narrative, paragraph format. *References or Literature Cited (This is where you make a list of the literature you have cited regarding this project. List the names of authors, publications and publishing dates.) To save space, consider noting “selected references” – those references essential to the project. Citation style must follow rules designated by discipline, e.g., MLA, APA, etc. *Acknowledgments (this is where you acknowledge grants and research programs. Also, use this section to thank the people who helped with your project. Can sometimes include your Contact Information) *Depending on your type of research and where you are in your project, you may have to use some variation of the above. Abstract Introduction Analyzing the data The extreme growth of New York State population causes brings more challenges and opportunities for healthcare organizations to provide culturally competent service to meet the need of a diverse population. According to data from the US Census Bureau, minority groups are projected to make up nearly 50% of the population by the year 2050 compared with 30% in 2000. Outside of ethnicity, there are also many cultural and social groups with which people identify that may affect how they view or receive healthcare. It is very difficult to provide quality service for a diverse population due to language barriers, health literacy gap, and cultural differences in communication styles. More medical programs are including cultural competency education to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in care. As students in the healthcare field, we want to be able to understand and provide care that best serves the needs of culturally diverse patient body. The purpose of this study is to interrogate patients, medical professionals and students to better understand what the expectations and a reality are. Received survey data will be compared and analyzed for further improvement of healthcare education. It is a modified study from previous year based on an idea of cultural competency importance. We have opened the scope of the project to include patients, students in health care majors and medical workers. The most important task of the research is to compare NYS population expectations and healthcare representatives’ opinion of reality. We believe that including the patients will give us valuable insight of understanding how healthcare professionals demonstrate cultural competence toward them with diverse values, beliefs and feelings. As the goal of cultural competence in healthcare is to reduce disparities and provide optimal care to patient regardless of their race, gender, ethnic background, native languages spoken and religious or cultural beliefs. Methodology Three surveys were created and distributed among students, medical workers and patients. A hundred people of each group had to answer 10 simple questions. The entire procedure was done in a written form anonymously. Our questioners were created based on the most sensitive today’s community points. • Most of the students represent the age of 18-34 group. The prevalence are females. The interviewed students are multinational and speak different languages. The most common are English speakers, Spanish and Russian. 80% of students are planning to get their bachelor degree and some of them seeking for higher level of education. 63% are traveling from different boroughs to get an education. Students do not have cultural competence as a part of school curriculum. They are not experienced enough to distinguish that cultural misunderstanding and racism can be leading causes to healthcare disparities. Conclusion Our survey reports on “Role of cultural competence” reflected wishes and expectations of general NYS population from healthcare delivery. People want to be understood and fairly treated regardless of what ethnicity, language or religion they are. Medical workers represent a diverse population and most of them are not native English speakers. Much effort was put on self-education in cultural competence to deliver the best professional care for our residents. Results also showed that our young students strive for knowledge and cultural education. They learn new languages and travel to different boroughs to get their degree and won’t stop at that point. We came to conclusion that cultural competence will give us the ability to fully satisfy basic needs of our modern and diverse population. We thought about… Acknowledgments Analyzing the data • Based on a patients’ opinion, the language does not matter. They prefer a medical representative to be 26-54 years old. The gender is not important. NYS patients would like to have a literate treating physician. 70% are ready to travel to get their treatment done and 83% are seeking in cultural competence and professionalism. More than half agreed that cultural misunderstanding might be an issue during the medical treatment performance. Most of the patients are still not sure if racism can be a factor to healthcare disparities. • The most common age for the healthcare representative – 35 to 44 years old. A good amount of them are different nationalities and are not native English speakers. Many do not have master’s degree but feel comfortable working with bachelor. More then half did not have cultural competence as a part of classroom curriculum but are self-educated at this point. Around 90% states from their own experience that cultural misunderstanding might be an issue during performing a medical procedure. 50% admitted that racism can be a cause of healthcare disparities. We would like to express special thanks and gratitude to our mentor, Professor Zoya Vinokur, who gave us an idea and guidelines to accomplish this project on “Role of cultural competence in healthcare delivery”. We appreciate our Department of Radiologic Technology and Medical Imaging, as well as its’ chair person, Professor Evans Lespinasse, who gave us the opportunity to be a part of a great team. Secondly, we would also like to thank all participants who helped in collecting the data and the City Tech Undergraduate Research team. Further information Our future perspectives were built on research results that we concluded. We are striving to have cultural competence as an integral part of classroom and school curriculum. The main goal of our study is to work on creating the most professional medical team, that is going to be beneficial in healthcare delivery.