Search results

Drawing on cultural intelligence and social exchange theories, this study examines cultural intelligence and its effects on proactive service performance and the mediating role of leader's collaborative nature and the moderating role of cultural training and emotional labor, particularly deep acting and surface acting, in the relationship between cultural intelligence and proactive service performance.

The study sample comprised 510 healthcare practitioners. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the hypotheses.

The results show that cultural intelligence positively influences proactive service performance. Additionally, leadership's collaborative nature influences proactive service performance. The moderating effect of cultural training and deep acting positively influences the relationship between cultural intelligence and proactive service performance. In contrast, surface acting reveals a reverse effect, thus exhibiting a positive effect on this relationship.

These findings suggest that public healthcare organizations should pay more attention in improving deep acting, cultural training and leadership's collaborative nature for optimal service performance.

The novelty of this study lies in its presentation of an integrated framework based on cultural intelligence and social exchange theories that can solve the contemporary challenges facing healthcare firms operating in emerging markets in integrating cultural intelligence and service performance.

It is again suggested that people from black and minority ethnic (BME) communities comprise a disproportionately high percentage of mental health inpatients. Furthermore, the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) concluded the Department of Health (DH) did not have ‘due regard’ to the Race Equality Duty, retaining major concerns regarding the ability of the DH to ensure future compliance (CRE, 2007). In light of these ongoing problems the DH published a five‐year action plan, Delivering Race Equality (DRE) in Mental Health Care to develop race equality and cultural competence training for mental health practitioners (DH, 2005).A focused review of literature was undertaken, structured around three questions.1. How is cultural competence in mental health care defined?2. How is cultural competence in mental health care delivered?3. How is the delivery of cultural competence in mental health care evaluated?Consensus is lacking on definition of cultural competence and on the sequence of when the components should be acquired, some terms being used interchangeably. It is unclear how cultural competence in mental health care can be delivered. No attempts have been adequately evaluated, particularly by service users (Bhui et al, 2007). More innovative research is needed to develop a consensual definition of cultural competence and to facilitate the delivery and evaluation of such, in ways acceptable to service users and service providers.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a case study of a multifaceted institutional approach to minimizing cancer health disparities, presenting a novel organizational framework entitled, “A.C.C.E.S.S.” to guide those efforts.

This paper presents a case study of an organization that operates under the theory that cancer health disparities are a result of the cumulative incongruence of differences that exist between people in various contexts and interactions over time. Consequently, the A.C.C.E.S.S. framework is used to demonstrate the range of opportunities within an organization to intervene and mitigate gaps that result in inequality.

Addressing A.C.C.E.S.S. in various interactions and contexts over a sustained period of time results in a continuous improvement cycle that attenuates cancer health disparity.

The antecedents and impacts of cancer health disparities are well documented. However, there is a dearth of directionality for institutions and organizations in achieving equality in cancer treatment and care. This paper provides a framework to consider in organizing such endeavors.

This paper provides a critical examination of cultural competence approaches, using the findings of a development project in the black voluntary sector that aimed to increase awareness of palliative care amongst older people and carers from groups most commonly referred to in the UK as being ‘minority ethnic’. The project involved narrative interviews with a convenience sample of 33 older people and carers and 11 focus groups with a convenience sample of 56 health and social care professionals. The findings from the interviews suggest that assumptions about culture and about care as competence that inform cultural competence models can have significant drawbacks for both service users and health and social care professionals. The paper further argues that cultural competence fails to fully recognise illness and care as occasions marked by profound moral and ethical demands.

This exploratory study aims to examine female Muslim immigrant patients’ expectations of physicians’ religious competence during clinical interactions.

In total, 101 female Muslim immigrants in Ottawa, Canada, completed an eight-item survey measuring patients’ expectations of physicians’ religious competence during clinical communication.

Results from the independent samples t-tests and one-way ANOVA suggested that female Muslim immigrant patients in this study expected their doctors to be aware of Islam as a religion and be sensitive to their religious needs, especially food/dietary practices during clinical communication. Although the participants did not differ in their expectations of physicians’ religious competence based on age, educational level, employment status and income level, they differed based on their frequencies of visiting doctors and their ethnic/cultural origin.

This study fills a gap in the literature by advancing understanding of religious competence during clinical interactions from female Muslim immigrant patients’ perspective. The findings can contribute to developing religiously competent and accessible health-care services for religiously diverse populations.

Although the need for cultural competence in clinical care has been well articulated for over four decades, the goal of integrating and addressing cultural issues in care remains elusive. The challenges can be attributed to a lack of clarity on definitions and a lack of understanding of what constitutes cultural competence. What to know and what to do are questions that are frequently raised in discussions of cultural competence. Previous literature has described cultural competence in terms of affective, behavioural, and cognitive domains. The purpose of this paper is to build on this discourse by discussing key attributes within each domain and extending the framework to highlight the dynamics of difference, clarify the goal of equity, and recognise the importance of practice environments in the development of cultural competence in clinical care.

There is an increasing interest in using information and communication technologies to support health services. But the adoption and development of even basic ICT communications services in many health services is limited, leaving enormous gaps in the broad understanding of its role in health care delivery. The purpose of this paper is to address a specific (intercultural) area of healthcare communications consumer disadvantage; and it examines the potential for ICT exploitation through the lens of a conceptual framework. The opportunity to pursue a new solutions pathway has been amplified in recent times through the development of computer-based ontologies and the resultant knowledge from ontologist activity and consequential research publishing.

A specific intercultural area of patient disadvantage arises from variations in meaning and understanding of patient and clinician words, phrases and non-verbal expression. Collection and localization of data concepts, their attributes and individual instances were gathered from an Aboriginal trainee nurse focus group and from a qualitative gap analysis (QGA) of 130 criteria-selected sources of literature. These concepts, their relationships and semantic interpretations populate the computer ontology. The ontology mapping involves two domains, namely, Aboriginal English (AE) and Type II diabetes care guidelines. This is preparatory to development of the Patient Practitioner Assistive Communications (PPAC) system for Aboriginal rural and remote patient primary care.

The combined QGA and focus group output reported has served to illustrate the call for three important drivers of change. First, there is no evidence to contradict the hypothesis that patient-practitioner interview encounters for many Australian Aboriginal patients and wellbeing outcomes are unsatisfactory at best. Second, there is a potent need for cultural competence knowledge and practice uptake on the part of health care providers; and third, the key contributory component to determine success or failures within healthcare for ethnic minorities is communication. Communication, however, can only be of value in health care if in practice it supports shared cognition; and mutual cognition is rarely achievable when biopsychosocial and other cultural worldview differences go unchallenged.

There has been no direct engagement with remote Aboriginal communities in this work to date. The authors have initially been able to rely upon a cohort of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people with relevant cultural expertise and extended family relationships. Among these advisers are health care practitioners, academics, trainers, Aboriginal education researchers and workshop attendees. It must therefore be acknowledged that as is the case with the QGA, the majority of the concept data is from third parties. The authors have also discovered that urban influences and cultural sensitivities tend to reduce the extent of, and opportunity to, witness AE usage, thereby limiting the ability to capture more examples of code-switching. Although the PPAC system concept is qualitatively well developed, pending future work planned for rural and remote community engagement the authors presently regard the work as mostly allied to a hypothesis on ontology-driven communications. The concept data population of the AE home talk/health talk ontology has not yet reached a quantitative critical mass to justify application design model engineering and real-world testing.

Computer ontologies avail us of the opportunity to use assistive communications technology applications as a dynamic support system to elevate the pragmatic experience of health care consultations for both patients and practitioners. The human-machine interactive development and use of such applications is required just to keep pace with increasing demand for healthcare and the growing health knowledge transfer environment. In an age when the worldwide web, communications devices and social media avail us of opportunities to confront the barriers described the authors have begun the first construction of a merged schema for two domains that already have a seemingly intractable negative connection. Through the ontology discipline of building syntactically and semantically robust and accessible concepts; explicit conceptual relationships; and annotative context-oriented guidance; the authors are working towards addressing health literacy and wellbeing outcome deficiencies of benefit to the broader communities of disadvantage patients.

The recognition of the importance of addressing cultural issues in psychotherapy and counseling has been increasing. The present paper seeks to contribute to the specification of multicultural competencies in the fields of counseling and clinical psychology, based on clients’ perspectives. In particular, its objectives were to explore the experiences of individuals of ethnic minority groups regarding their access to the Portuguese healthcare system and to identify the multicultural competencies of the clinicians (as perceived by the clients) which would be required to improve culturally sensitive treatments.

The sample included 40 adults from different ethnic minority groups in Portugal – a total of 30 women and ten men – with a mean age of 34. Participants took part in one of eight focus groups, which were conducted using a semi‐structured interview plan.

Content analysis revealed that, generally, participants had experienced discrimination in the healthcare system, and that mental healthcare was perceived as mixed (both positive and negative). Furthermore, participants identified specific aspects of multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills required of clinicians to provide culturally sensitive treatments, providing support for the tridimensional model of multicultural competencies.

Implications are discussed for ethical guidelines and clinical training of counselors, clinical psychologists, and other social and health professionals in Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the competences needed for managing competitive bidding in the Finnish healthcare and to understand the management of competitive bidding holistically, considering the challenges the management faces from being embedded in focal nets and the wider network.

The phenomenon is examined from the perspective of networks. This focus acknowledges the fact that competitive bidding changes the dynamics of the network and therefore requires new competences from the actors. The study applies qualitative methods.

Competitive bidding connects effects, interests, resources and actors together. It changes the dynamics of the net and the network. Thus, new competences are required. Three major competence areas were detected: relationship management competences, net management competences and purchasing competences.

The conclusions shed light on the combination of competences needed in managing competitive bidding in healthcare networks.