Introduction
Diversity education is a critical component in providing cultural competence care in healthcare. The concept involves fostering the ability to understand, interact, communicate, and cooperate with diverse populations from different backgrounds. Also, diverse education consists of respecting various people’s beliefs, values, cultural norms, and practices and addressing how the social health determinants relate to patient care. Diversity education is necessary for healthcare since the population is gradually evolving and dynamically changing, leading to many ethnicities with different backgrounds and experiences (United States Census Bureau 2021). There is a need to incorporate all these diverse populations to ensure the provision of quality and affordable healthcare services, such as Medicare and access to health insurance plans. Therefore, the research paper focuses on the importance of diversity education in medical curricula.
Providing Care for a Diversifying Patient Population
The United States population is dynamically evolving, with cultures migrating into the country, from all over the world. Such is attributed to the demographic changes which lead to ethnic diversity among populations. For instance, in the United States, there has been a 61% increase in racial groups by the end of 2022 (United States Census Bureau 2021). The growth was attributed to an increased population of Asians, Africans, Hispanos, Latinos, non-Hispanos, Indians, and Native Hawaiians, among other multi-racial groups worldwide (United States Census Bureau 2021). The populations have diverse backgrounds with varying health practices and beliefs, making it challenging to accommodate all these cultures. The differences include attitudes towards particular medications, dietary restrictions, uptake of other drugs, and contradictory traditional health practices.
For instance, some cultures may have strong beliefs in herbal medicine, while others may strongly believe in modern medications. Without a clear understanding of cultural differences among different populations, healthcare practitioners face challenges in providing quality care, leading to poor health outcomes (United States Census Bureau 2021). Consequently, medical practitioners need diversity education so they can respect, accept, and comprehend their patients’ cultural origins to provide optimal treatment. Besides, diverse education helps professionals appreciate or even integrate other practices from other cultures, such as Asian therapies, in treating patients with chronic conditions such as cancer, diabetes, or hypertension.
Health Disparities Reduction
The diverse population is subject to disparities that hinder their access to quality and affordable healthcare. The differences are attributed to factors such as poverty, discrimination, illiteracy, and marginalization, which impede their ability to seek healthcare services. For instance, in the United States, African Americans, Hispanos, and Asians have higher rates of chronic illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, or diabetes, among many other conditions, than the general American population (United States Census Bureau 2021). The health disparities are directly linked to socioeconomic factors that subject the marginalized groups to lower economic brackets, which affect their access to affordable health insurance packages. Hence, they become disadvantaged and end up missing quality and affordable healthcare. As a result, diversity education is crucial in promoting awareness regarding these disparities, enabling them to implement interventions that would help address them and promote quality health outcomes.
Eliminating Racial Bias and Discrimination
The different populations in the health sector are subject to the harsh socioeconomic environment, which often leads to bias in accessing healthcare services. Also, unconscious stereotypes and prejudices affect how patients are treated regarding their origin, cultural background, or ethnicity. Such leads to discrimination and marginalization of specific groups, such as African Americans, who are often discriminated especially in the United States (Riggan et al.2020). For instance, in the United States, over the past 50 years, the quality of life of whites and blacks has improved due to increased life expectancies and reduced mortality rates (Zwart et al.2010). However, black people have higher mortality rates than white people (Schulman et al.1999). Also, American Indians, Hispanos, and Latinos have elevated death rates due to multiple chronic conditions compared with the white population.
Thus, ethnic differences significantly contribute to racial disparities in the United States, leading to reduced access to medical care, caused by higher rates of unemployment and under-representation in high-paying jobs with benefit packages such as health insurance. As a result, diverse education promotes awareness of racial discrimination and bias and helps formulate complex interventions that help address these challenges (Betancourt et al. 2009). Also, diverse education equips practitioners from diverse cultural backgrounds with skills that place them in better positions of higher-paying jobs or opportunities, enabling them to access benefits such as health insurance.
Facilitating Communication between Physicians and Patients by Eliminating the Language Barrier
Communication is a multi-dimensional and complex process directly linked to an individual’s background environment. The different ethnic backgrounds where the diverse populations originate pose everyday communication challenges among health professionals and patients in the healthcare sector. For instance, nurses who grow up in African countries and get to work in the United States often face challenges in communicating with American patients due to language barriers (Lukin 2020). Also, nurses from Asian countries face language barriers when communicating with patients in American healthcare settings. Such affects the delivery of quality healthcare services to patients, affecting the overall healthcare outcomes.
As a result, diverse education equips health professionals with practical communication skills and critical aspects of patient care. Such facilitates physician-patient relations and profoundly impacts patients’ perceptions of treatment outcomes. Also, effective communication helps promote high-quality nursing care, patient satisfaction, and overall quality healthcare provision. Moreover, the skills can help foster positive health outcomes such as reduced anxiety, pain, guilt, and disease symptoms. Furthermore, appropriate communication can help increase patient compliance, cooperation with the physicians, and acceptance and improve the overall physiological status of a patient.
Accommodating Gender Bias and Differences in Religions
In healthcare, gender bias and religious affiliations often contribute significantly to accessing quality and affordable healthcare. For instance, women are less frequently admitted to hospitals than men. Primarily, women from different ethnic backgrounds, such as African and Asian communities, face challenges in accessing healthcare facilities due to gender bias (Lukin 2020). For instance, in the United States, 71.4% of African and Asian women have limited access to quality and affordable health insurance packages (Lukin 2020). Also, the marginalized women groups believe that personal choices concerning their health should be prioritized over the family’s religious values. Such contributes to limited access to quality healthcare by most men in family set-ups due to the societal superiority that women pose.
On the other hand, most male patients feel that their healthcare choices should precede the family’s religious values, affecting the choice of healthcare facilities. Due to this imbalance, there tends to be gender bias in accessing quality healthcare services among patients across many states (Guiahi 2019). As a result, diverse education helps bridge this gap in healthcare access based on gender (Seeleman et al. 2021). This is achieved by creating awareness of equality’s importance in accessing quality healthcare services, regardless of gender differences based on personal preferences and choices.
Appreciating Cultural Diversity and Learning from Others’ Experiences
Different cultural backgrounds have other races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, religions, and activities that contribute to cultural diversity. In healthcare, cultural diversity represents a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, encompassing a broad scope of ethnicities, which helps foster inclusivity in providing quality healthcare (McKenzie et al. 2021). As a result, diverse education helps practitioners appreciate, accommodate, and respect other people’s way of life, beliefs, activities, and cultural norms. Such helps practitioners effectively communicate with people from different backgrounds and learn through different experiences.
For instance, nurses from Asian and African countries have hands-on experience dealing with more challenging chronic conditions such as cancer, diabetes, and hypertension. Such understanding contributes to the harsh socioeconomic environment around their ethnic backgrounds in African and Asian countries (Guiahi 2019). Upon their migration to the United States, such experience can be of great help to other nurses on how to handle extreme chronic conditions. Such can only be implemented if the nurses communicate effectively with the American nurses. Therefore, diverse education plays a significant role in encompassing, integrating, and connecting practitioners from different racial backgrounds to help facilitate the delivery of quality healthcare outcomes.
Accommodating Epidemiological Health Differences between Populations
Different populations have different epidemiological health differences, which should be accommodated to ensure positive patient outcomes. For instance, diverse people have distinct health differences in the United States. The whites face lower mortality rates, lower morbidity, and lower impacts of health-related problems (McKenzie et al. 2021). On the other hand, marginalized groups such as African Americans and Asians face high morbidity rates, higher mortality rates, and higher impact of health-related problems. The health differences are attributed to the risk continuum subject to social and economic status, environmental exposures, work stress, and social isolation caused by marginalization and racial discrimination.
As a result, diverse education helps health practitioners accommodate various health differences between populations by creating awareness that different socioeconomic groups have varying health differences. Practitioners can understand the socioeconomic status of different people based on their ethnicities; with that in mind, they can comprehend and adapt to such differences (McKenzie et al. 2021). Also, health providers can implement interventions that promote cultural inclusivity, considering populations from the global context (Dogra et al. 2009). Moreover, diverse education helps to create awareness of the distribution of health risks among different people since marginalized groups are more exposed to high-risk conditions and outbreaks than the white population in the United States.
Conclusion
In summary, diversity education is critical in promoting cultural diversity within the healthcare sector to facilitate positive patient outcomes. Also, diversity education helps to eliminate communication barriers, gender bias, racial bias, and health disparities and fosters the accommodation of epidemiological differences between different populations within the healthcare sector. It is necessary to ensure patients with different racial backgrounds access quality and affordable healthcare services, and such can be fostered through diverse education within the healthcare sector.
Without diversity education, health practitioners are more likely to face challenges in providing culturally competent care that is crucial in meeting the needs of the diverse patient population. Therefore, health practitioners must understand, apprehend, accommodate, and adapt to the different health practices of various patients. Such will help foster positive patient outcomes, which can be achieved through integrating complex healthcare training programs in medical schools and healthcare settings. Such will benefit not only the diverse population but also the diverse health practitioners by expanding their skills and knowledge in handling the sensitive needs of the diverse populations.
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