Culturally Competent Care for African Americans Health, Medicine Essay

Culturally Competent Care for African Americans
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Culturally Competent Care for African Americans
All people have a right to high-quality medical services regardless of their racial, ethnic, or cultural backgrounds. For decades, African Americans have been discriminated in various aspects, such as health, justice, and employment, in the United States of America (USA). One of the ways that these individuals feel mistreated is based on how they are handled in hospitals or healthcare centers. In some instances, health professionals do not know when they are crossing the cultural boundaries of African Americans when providing healthcare services, which adversely affect the outcomes. Notably, these people have unique values, cultural, religious beliefs as compared to the dominant white community. The paper discusses some strategies that are recommended to encourage culturally competent care of African Americans in the USA.
Health disparities of black people in the USA can be eliminated by providing cultural awareness of this demographic to health professionals. In particular, African Americans highly value their cultural and religious beliefs. When physicians handling these individuals understand nothing about black people’s cultural heritage, they cannot do much in treating and caring for sick individuals from this community. For instance, African Americans believe in spirituality, which is the belief in a supernatural being who rules the universe, interconnectedness among living creatures, and the meaning and purpose of life. As such, spirituality can be used to give hope, inner peace, comfort, and significantly affects the health outcomes of a person (Spruill, Magwood, Nemeth, & Williams, 2015). Consequently, clinicians dealing with African Americans should be compassionate, altruistic, and spiritual so that they can treat members of this demographic successfully.
Another recommendation for encouraging culturally competent care of African Americans is eradicating communication and language barriers. Although the majority of black people are literate, some of them are unable to speak the universal language, which is English. For this reason, health professionals should learn the languages used by black people residing in a specific geographical area. Moreover, hospitals should have language translators who work in close coll...