Diversity in Health Care - Essay Example

Diversity in Health Care Considering various needs of heath care in the 21st century, it is important to diversify the workforce in this sector. In the workplace, diversity means a deliberate initiative by management of organisations to search and employ persons from different societal set-ups. It has important impacts on businesses because it helps in achieving corporate social responsibility, economic payback, legal obligation, resource diversification, marketing strategy, and communication strategy.

In the health sector, workforce diversity plays an important role of adequate provision of culturally competent health care. Diversification in health care fosters research in the neglected areas of societal need enriching a pool of mangers that can make policies needed by a diverse community. Additionally, diverse health care will increase accessibility of health facilities to the underserved and the minority groups in the society. United States is unlike many other countries with a background comprising of diverse communities that have different ways of life.

Despite the background, statistics show that as the population of the whites grows with a certain percentage, African American population grows by more than three times the white’s percentage. The Native American population, Hispanic population, and Asian population increases by a larger percentage than that of the African American. According to Campinha-Bacote, growing multicultural community and the long-standing disparities in the health status of persons from other diverse backgrounds have made health providers to try to solve the problem through diversification of workforce, Campinha-Bacote (2003).

The rate at which different communities are migrating to the United States calls for diversity in the health care sector to ensure that all groups receive quality health care services. Besides achieving equity and fairness through diversity, a diverse health care workforce will advance cultural diversity, increase access to high quality services, strengthening research, and ensure evolution of better management. Cultural competence refers to the ability to interact and work with persons from different cultural backgrounds under ones service.

Cultural competent workforce starts right from the educational institutions, which admit medical practitioners selected from underrepresented minority groups. According to health affairs journal, “cultural competence denotes the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviour required of a practitioner to provide optimal health care services to persons from a wide range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds” (Cohen, Gabriel and Terrell, 2002, p. 92). With the rapidly increasing diverse population in the United States, it is possible that in future, most medical practitioners will serve patients from other backgrounds other than their own.

Therefore, medical practitioners must endeavour to understand other people’s beliefs and cultures that influence their illnesses, response to treatment, and adherence to medical advice. To provide effective medical care to a diverse community, physicians must eliminate language barriers, and understand different tribe’s religious taboos, as well as alternative traditional medication. Besides medical students learning about other cultures, learning institutions with diverse cultural background will equip them with necessary cultural competence skills.

Additionally, medical practitioners can only gain cultural competence through exposure when working and treating diverse communities. It is anticipated that the ever-increasing diverse population is likely to pose challenges in the health sector. By embracing diversity, health care institutions attract a great pool of knowledge from persons from different cultures and backgrounds. Eventually, this results in a pool of medically trained professionals and policy makers ready to assume various positions in management.

The management who fully understand cultural competency will collaborate with the government to address important health care issues. Additionally, diverse management will bring together the health care funding agents, private programme managers, and government to come up with solutions to healthcare. It is important that health care institutions join other American organisations that have embraced diversity in management by employing persons from different cultures, gender, and race. Demographic changes in the US have great impacts on health care.

Statistics reveal that although US population has remained relatively constant over the years, children are becoming a smaller proportion of the entire population. According to Freed & Fant, “While the adult population has been growing, the absolute number of children under age fourteen dropped monotonically from 1966 to 1982, meaning that there was a widening gap between the number of children and adults during that period” (Freed & Fant, 2004, p. 168). There is a considerable increase in average life span, a fact that depicts that by 2020, 20% of the population will be 65 years and older.

Already, the ageing population with chronic problems challenge the health care institution’s ability to provide effective health care. Additionally, the changes in the demographics and low population of children challenge the future and current health of children in that few finances can go for this allocation affecting future productivity. Demographics in the US have influenced diversity of customers positively. Many medical institutions especially nursing institutions incorporate students from various ethnic and racial backgrounds.

They get exposure while still at school, understand other cultures and beliefs, and appreciate them. When joining the health institutions, medics have acquired cultural competency. In conclusion, diversity in health care institutions is the need of the hour in US. References Campinha-Bacote, J. (2003). "Many faces: addressing diversity in health care". Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 8(1), 2 Cohen, J., Gabriel, B., & Terrell, C. (2002). “The case for diversity in the health care workforce,” Health Affairs, 21(5), 90-102 Freed, G & Fant, K. (2004). “The impact of the aging of America on children” Health Affairs Journal, Vol. 23(4), 168-174