Culturally Competent Healthcare: Home

Every patient brings their own personal, cultural, emotional, and physical history into every interaction. It is unlikely that any practitioner will become truly culturally competent. Other, more appropriate terms include cultural humility, cultural effectiveness, and cultural responsiveness. This guide includes tools to help pratitioners become more culturally effective. Tabs in the guide focus on race, ethnicity and culture, sexual and gender identity, and physical and mental disabilities.

Looking for articles on cultural competence, humility, effectiveness, or responsiveness?

The best databases are Academic Search Complete, CINAHL, ERIC (education), and Medline.

Want to search them all at once?

Use EBSCOhost and select All Databases.

According the the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services--

Culture. Attitudes and behaviors that are characteristic of a group or community.

Cultural Competence. 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.

Health Literacy. The degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.