Diversity in Healthcare
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Feb 20, 2024
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Diversity in Healthcare
Yasmine Kanan
Bachelor’s in healthcare administration, Grand Canyon University HCA 455 Professor Delio
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Introduction Diversity in healthcare is extremely crucial regarding quality care for patients and building a comfortable and safe workplace. It is important that healthcare organizations improve diversity to ensure that people of all socioeconomic backgrounds, races, ethnicities, cultures, sexual orientations, religions, and genders are represented in the healthcare workforce (Mozifaripour, 2023). Diversity in healthcare also positively impacts the environment of the organization, individual patients, and the community itself. Diversity in Healthcare
Diversity is defined as the practice of including people from different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, religion, race, etc. Having a diverse demographic in a healthcare organization positively impacts the industry by allowing both staff and patients feel safe and understood. An accepting environment that is brought by diversity allows professionals to give quality care to their patients by creating a safe environment and patients can be well taken care of. Cultural competence in healthcare is a set of behaviors, knowledge, and skills that help administrators and practitioners respond to cultural issues relating to patients (Mozafaripour, 2023). For example, when an employee is working with patients from a different cultural background, they recognize that and must utilize the tools to respect the patient’s values. This helps administrators and other healthcare professionals give the best of care to their patients. That is why diversity in healthcare is important and can positively impact the environment and workplace. It has been proven that individuals with diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds have a more difficult time such as lack of healthcare and access to high quality care. It is also proven that people with color experience greater incidence and more cases of severe diseases compared to white people in the United States, (Jayoung Kim, 2020). These
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disparities of racial inequality that has changed over generations has made access to healthcare more difficult. Accepting of all race and color will help eliminate these disparities and struggles that these minorities face and create an equal environment. In addition, diverse religions and spiritual beliefs can impact patient experience and influence their decisions regarding treatment. For example, depending on their religion, patients may address their medical issues differently based on their teachings and traditions. Therefore, it is important that healthcare professionals understand this and have the tools to understand and respect this. That is why accepting of diversity in the workplace is important and positively impacts both the patients and organization.
Cultural Competence Cultural competence is the ability of an individual to understand and respect values, attitudes, beliefs, and more that differ across different cultures. Cultural competence provides many different factors when it comes to organizational behavior. These factors include valuing diversity, having the capacity for cultural assessment, being conscious of the dynamics when cultures interact, and having culture knowledge.. Having a set of values and principles, demonstrating behavior, attitudes, policies, and structures enables staff in an organization to work effectively cross culturally (Green & Carrillo, 2002). When having the capacity to value diversity, conduct self-assessment, manage dynamic differences, and adapt to diversity allows the community and environment to feel safe. Administrators can implement policy making, administration that positively affects consumers, families, and communities. Cultural competence allows an individual to honor and respect different beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that one might come across. Diversity Management
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Diversity management refers to organizational actions that aim to promote greater inclusion of employees from different backgrounds into an organization’s structure through specific policies and programs. When utilizing this tactic, it allows an organization to manage strategy as a response to the growing diversity of the workforce. Diversity in management is a process of developing policies to better the skills required to fix demographic changes in the community or workplace (Borkowski & Meese, 2020). As time goes on and companies evolve it has become more common for institutions to enhance employee inclusion, promotions, and retentions from employees who are from different backgrounds and cultures. Healthcare disparities include not only ethnic and racial groups, but also older and younger generations. For example, in the United
States American citizenry is changing and now Millennials are the largest adult generation followed by Generation X and the population rate continues increase (Craven, 2020). This increase in ethnic, racial, and immigrant populations had led to new world challenges for healthcare systems as personnel seeks to understand the unique needs of patients, other consumers, and the staff in the organization. As the workplace hires and works with this demographic it is important for the workplace to understand the values and perspectives of this group, more so patients of this group. Changes in the U.S. demographic impacts the healthcare industry, diversity of customers, and diversity within the organization it has given a need for consideration of the diverse needs and how the community needs to be treated and spoken to. Digital marketing campaigns have been more present to reach out to consumers of this age group
and generation to reach out to diverse audiences. Areas that are less ethnically and racially diverse have had a growth in both millennial and aging populations which has proven to be clinically challenging and way around this obstacle is to take the time as an organization to
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understand and spend the energy to learn more about them and what works best to create a well-
rounded organization. Understanding Diversity Understanding diversity creates innovation and creativity in any setting. Every culture, nationality, and individual visualize the world in a different perspective and every person has a different form of knowledge, perspective, and point of view. Sharing all these perspectives is a gift and allows diversity, acceptance, and respect shine through. Essentially, when this idea comes together it will create a safer and efficient work environment and in return give the best quality care to the consumer. Learning about other cultures helps understand other perspectives and helps turn down negative stereotypes and personal biases about these different groups. If everyone is aware and educated of different cultures and groups, it creates more empathy. Cultural diversity helps people recognize and respect different ways of being that are not one sided. References Borkowski, N., & Meese, K. A. (2020).
Organizational behavior in health care
(4th ed.). Jones
& Bartlett Learning. ISBN-13: 9781284183245
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Betancourt, J., Green, A. & Carrillo, E. (2002).
Cultural competence in health care: Emerging frameworks and practical approaches.
The Commonwealth Fund.
Craven, C. (2022, September 2). How U.S. demographic trends are reshaping healthcare now and forever – and why that matters
. Perficient Blogs. Jayoung Kim, “Equality, Inclusion, and Diversity in Healthcare During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Jun 30, 2020.
Mozafaripour, S. (2023, January 30). Cultural diversity in Healthcare: USAHS
. University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences.
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