Benchmarking cultural competence: A trans-disciplinary appoach towards assuring a competent health workforce

Cultural competence has been recognized as an important strategy in the fight against health disparities. Ample evidence exists documenting the relationship between cultural competence of health professionals and health disparities. Compounding this fact are the changing demographics of our nation, making it imperative to assure a culturally competent health workforce. Although policies are in place mandating culturally and linguistically competent health care, an extensive literature review and environmental scan indicates the lack of a national set of core competencies to guide the development of cultural competency-based curricula for health professionals. Where competency-like sets in cultural competence exist, few have been effectively translated into curricula or have allowed for readily benchmarking learner performance. These findings confirm results from several studies showing health professionals are not yet adequately prepared to address shifts in the nation's patient population. More than 500 cultural competency-like statements were compiled from over 20 different sources representing a spectrum of health professions including psychology, nursing, epidemiology, dentistry, medicine, public health, and pharmacy. The analysis of the statements resulted in the development of selected domains, most amenable to developing cultural competency-based curricula. Resulting domains were compared against the National Quality Forum's Framework for Measuring and Reporting Culturally Competent Quality Care with a high degree of consistency. The findings represent a fertile starting point towards the development of a national set of cultural competencies for health professionals.