Cultural competency
Health People 2030 provides 10-year, measurable public health objectives. Overarching goals are:
Attain healthy, thriving lives and well-being free of preventable disease, disability, injury, and premature death.
Eliminate health disparities, achieve health equity, and attain health literacy to improve the health and well-being of all.
Create social, physical, and economic environments that promote attaining the full potential for health and well-being for all.
Promote healthy development, healthy behaviors, and well-being across all life stages.
Engage leadership, key constituents, and the public across multiple sectors to take action and design policies that improve the health and well-being of all.
Reference: https://health.gov/healthypeople (Links to an external site.)
To accomplish these goals health professionals must understand how culture, society and health care professionals contribute to these disparities and work to minimize the effects of inequality on health and health outcomes.
Cherry and Jacobs (2019) describe population trends and economic and social changes that impact access to health care. To continue the discussion of values and ethics in health care professionals, specifically nurses, this online assignment will help you look at your values and beliefs and professional culture and relationship to patient care in vulnerable and often marginalized populations. The IOM (2002) determined that one reason for unequal care was discrimination that occurs at the provider level and involves differences and conflicts in values and beliefs, bias, prejudices, and stereotyping.
Common Perceptions and Beliefs of Health Care Professionals (Including Nurses)
Personal Responsibility. Poor health stems from individuals making unhealthy choices. We can encourage people to exercise and eat right, but it’s up to them.
Unfortunate but not unjust. Hierarchies are everywhere. Life isn’t fair, and differences in group health, like wealth disparities, will always be with us.
Nothing can be done. If health inequities do in fact arise from structural inequities in the rest of society, then what can be done short of a revolution? (Unnatural Causes California Newsreel 2008)
These message frames are compelling because they speak to people’s deeper, often unconscious investment in certain ideas about society. Overcoming resistance is not simply a matter of presenting new information, but of creating opportunities for people to interrogate their own assumptions. Offering positive examples of how things might be different, linking the issues to other core values and engaging people in creative problem-solving can be very effective.
Write a reflection on your values and beliefs and professional culture and relationship to patient care.How do you minimize the effects of inequality on health and health outcomes of vulnerable and potentially marginalized patients through your care?