What is culturally competent healthcare?
The Office of Minority Health defines culturally competent healthcare as “services that are respectful of and responsive to the health beliefs and practices, and cultural and linguistic needs of diverse patient populations.” OMH also states: “Cultural and linguistic competence is the ability of health care providers and health care organizations to understand and respond effectively to the cultural and linguistic needs brought by patients to the health care encounter.” Cross et al. (1989) describe cultural and linguistic competence as: “…a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals that enables effective work in cross-cultural situations. ‘Culture’ refers to integrated patterns of human behavior that include the language, thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions of racial, ethnic, religious, or social groups.
