National" Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health Care"

We thought it would be a good idea to comment and expand on each of the 14 Standards CLAS. We will begin with Standard 1:

"Health care organizations should ensure that patients/consumers receive from all staff members effective, understandable, and respectful care that is provided in a manner compatible with their cultural health beliefs and practices and preferred language."

From an organizational perspective, leadership needs to take the primary role in ensuring that all patients/consumers are treated with respect, and services are provided in accordance to their cultural health beliefs, practices, and preferred language. An organization’s leadership serves as a role model for staff to understand, implement, and practice best culturally and linguistic strategies that give results. Health care organizations should create a culture that opens lines of communication among staff and patients, and it is sensitive to the cultural and linguistic needs of the individuals served. It is important to note that cultural competence or understanding cultural competence is not only related to knowing and learning about ethnic or racial groups that migrate to North America. It is also about understanding the cultural nuances and practices of a single population, for instance in North America, Caucasians have difference cultural differences, if you live in the South even the accent varies from those living in the Northeast. In some words, cultural and linguistic competence is about respecting individuals or groups own way of communication and their practices, and approaches to life. Respect is one of the most basic good sense practices that an individual can perform in order to interact with another person. However, cultural and linguistic competence should be a “Mirror Effect” meaning that patients also should invest time in learning about the different cultures that are found in North America such as the society, language, health care system, services, and resources such as organizations. It cannot be one direction, it is should be a “Mirror Effect” for patient’s best interest, benefit, and safety.



Source: National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services
in Health Care. FINAL REPORT U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health. March 2001.

Author:
Helen E. Dao is the President and CEO at her company Dao Management Consulting Services, Inc. (www.daoconsultingservices.com) Helen has been working on cultural diversity and public health strategies development for 11 years. You can follow her on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/#!/daoconsulting and @ her blog http://daoconsultingservices.blogspot.com/