Cultural Self-Assessment: Cultural Awareness, Knowledge, and Skills

Cultural Self-Assessment
Student’s Name
Institution
Cultural Self-Assessment
Conducting a cultural self-assessment is important to determine one’s level of cultural competence. Working with diverse cultures requires a proficient level of cultural awareness and sensitivity. Cultural competence among healthcare professionals is important because as revealed by Otuata (2019), it can help address health disparities and increase equality in access to healthcare among culturally diverse populations. My cultural self-assessment was guided by an assessment tool provided by the Colorado Education Initiative (n.d.). This tool is in the form of a checklist that examines cultural competence in terms of cultural awareness, knowledge, and skills. Each section has about ten questions that are answered by checking 1 for “Never”, 2 for “Sometimes/Occasionally”, 3 for “Fairly Often/Pretty well”, and 4 for “Always/Very Well”. I answered the questions in each section and rated my cultural competence based on the points from each section.
Awareness
Cultural awareness entails the recognition and understanding of one’s and others' cultures. It examines gender, race, sexuality as well as mistrust and bias within the healthcare system and among healthcare professionals (Jongen, McCalman, & Bainbridge, 2018). Through this self-assessment checklist, I realized that my areas of strength in cultural awareness are: (1) sharing my culture with others, (2) recognizing areas of discomfort when I come across people from a different race, ethnicity, or sexuality than mine, (3) knowing my culture, (4) being curious about different cultures, and (5) realizing that situations that involve cultural diversity can be uncertain. These are strengths that I have developed over time because I know that being culturally competent is a continuous learning process. Over time, I have become intentional about my journey towards becoming culturally competent and I have applied some strategies to ensure that I learn about diverse cultures every day. Some of these strategies include engaging in programs and activities that include diverse populations. My interactions with people from different cultures have made me realize the uncertainty that surrounds cultural differences and has helped me challenge the stereotypes that I hold about other cultures. The uncertainty can come from saying something that might be interpreted differently by those from a different culture. Also, these interactions have allowed me to share my culture with others. This has especially been interesting because I have had to learn more about my culture so that I can share it accurately with others. While I recognize the progress in my journey, the checklist also made me identify some key areas that need improvement. These include; (1) checking my assumptions and stereotypes and (2) reflecting on how my judgment about situations and people is informed by my culture. While I am aware of most of the assumptions I hold about people whose culture is different from mine, I am still developing ways of dealing with these assumptions. Also, I rarely reflect on how my culture influences my judgment.
Knowledge
Being knowledgeable ab...