Clinicians' Education and Engagement is Fundamental to Culturally Competent Care

Clinicians’ education and engagement are fundamental to operationalizing cultural competence in clinical practice.  Clinicians must be equipped with the skills, knowledge and approaches required to respect all variables of diversity, encompassing, but not limited to cultural, religious, spiritual, and personal beliefs, as well as the values, preferences, and special needs of individual patients in assessment, care planning and intervention. On demand access to educational resources can also facilitate operationalization of cultural competence.  This presentation will discuss how a tertiary academic medical center used innovation and creativity to develop educational curricula for clinicians to empower and engage them to operationalize cultural competence in their practices. The use of a unit-based champions educational program, a cultural consultancy model of education, didactic educational strategies, a train the trainer program and website resources are a few of the educational strategies used to empower and engage clinicians. The outcome is the availability of multiple and on-demand access to educational resources that support the operationalization of cultural competence in practice.