Human Diversity and Cultural Competency in Healthcare

Human diversity, also known as cultural diversity, encompasses the variety of human societies and cultures.
It involves examining similarities and differences that make individuals unique and valuable.
Cultures establish the behaviors of people and can provide lifelong comfort.

Globalization involves people crossing borders for work, education, medical care, and residency.
Societies, businesses, and professional organizations have become increasingly multicultural or cross-cultural.
Social networking has enhanced globalization on a worldwide scale.

Common traits of human diversity include age, ethnicity, national origin, race, gender, sexual orientation, mental ability, physical ability, and religion.
Other characteristics include work style/ethic, family status, geographic location, lifestyle, physical features, economic conditions, political beliefs, and first language.

Bias is a natural human characteristic that must be addressed through education and knowledge of other cultures.
Personal biases significantly influence how individuals perceive others, even without conscious thought.
Assimilation: The process where individuals of a diverse culture eventually give up their original cultural language and identity to merge into another culture, usually the majority.
Biculturalism: The ability to competently negotiate both the mainstream culture and one's own individual culture.

Primary values include activity, hard work, personal achievement, success, individualism, efficiency, practicality, affluence, consumerism, and competition.
Openness, directness, and being well-informed are also prioritized.
Age-based generations include the Greatest Generation, Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials (Gen Y), and Generation Z.
Demographic projections indicate the Millennial Generation will overtake the Baby Boomer generation in terms of U.S. population numbers.

Effective healthcare requires bilingual/multicultural staff, translators, interpreters, and medical documents in multiple languages.
Digital translation technology supports communication.
Sensitivity to multicultural and bilingual needs is essential for the Informed Consent process.
Radiologic and imaging sciences professionals must ensure patients feel respected regardless of gender or sexual orientation.
Six areas of cultural diversity impacting healthcare are communication, space, time, environmental control, biologic variations, and social organizations.

More than $10\%$ of the world population has some type of disability.
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 improved access and accommodation for individuals with disabilities.
Human rights law for disability includes four essential core values:
- Autonomy: Respecting the right of persons to have self-directed actions; the individual must be the center of decisions affecting them.
- Dignity: Recognizing the inherent self-worth and value of every individual.
- Equality: Ensuring fair treatment regardless of perceived differences.
- Solidarity: Requiring society to support the rights of persons with disabilities.

Cultural competency is a set of attitudes, behaviors, and policies enabling effective interactions in multicultural environments.
The five key elements include adopting diversity as a value, developing capacity for cultural self-assessment, understanding cross-cultural dynamics, incorporating multicultural knowledge, and designing service processes for multicultural environments.
Healthcare professionals should avoid becoming ethnocentric to provide empathetic and effective patient care.