Cultural competence training may be the single most important element of assuring the cultural competence in health care organizations, and one of the elements most directly related to clinical care and outcomes. However, the lack of national standards in this area complicates efforts to make cultural competence training a requirement for health professionals and health organization staff. This does not mean that the area is not well traversed; on the contrary, training programs, curricula, resources, and purveyors of all the above abound. The main challenge for anyone seeking to attain cultural competence is trying to determine what the training contains and who should do it, as there is no standard curriculum, nor universally accepted certification or credentialing. Given the absence of a standardized curriculum and evaluative measures, it is difficult to discern the relative quality of the training programs when compared to one another, and this is an issue that must be addressed in order to fully assess individual or organizational competence, especially if participation in training becomes one marker of competence.
Learning Objectives: The audience will be able to: 1) identify major approaches to cultural competence training 2) identify key elements of cultural competence 3) describe multi-stakeholder consensus building efforts towards standardizing key elements of cultural competence
Keywords: Cultural Competency, Training
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.