Cross-Cultural Health Care: Physician Cultural Competence Assessment

Physician Cultural Competence Assessment

Cross-cultural competence is becoming an increasingly important clinical skill. This is largely due to two inter-related factors. First, the U.S. continues to receive unprecedented numbers of  foreign-born immigrants. Second, Americans are traveling to more exotic and remote locations around the world and bringing back diseases specific to those areas. As medicine becomes more global in its outlook, physicians must adapt.

Few practicing physicians in the U.S. have had any formal training on cross-cultural medical care. Medical journals report that many physicians do not feel prepared to provide specific aspects of cross-cultural care, including caring for patients whose health beliefs were at odds with Western medicine (25%), new immigrants (25%), and patients whose health beliefs affect treatment (20%). 

Critical Measures’ physician assessment covers six major areas:

• Extent of formal training in cross-cultural medicine.
• Opinions regarding health disparities.
• Self-assessed preparedness to treat immigrants, LEP and patients whose health beliefs may be at odds with Western medicine.
• Knowledge of and adherence to language access laws and institutional policies and procedures regarding language access (including formal training on how to work with LEP patients through qualified interpreters). 
• Knowledge of and adherence to national best practices in cross-cultural medicine.
• Interest in receiving additional training in cross-cultural medicine.

This survey can be administered electronically in order to minimize the impact on physicians’ time. From past client experiences we have found that our survey takes, on average, only five to eight minutes to complete.

Cross-Cultural Health Care

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