Cultural Competence, Changing Personal Perceptions and Attitudes

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Cultural Competence, Changing Personal Perceptions and Attitudes
According to the NASW (2008), practitioners need to look beyond cultural variations, historic oppression and discrimination. They need to look outside of ethnicity, race, age, gender, ability, and sexual identity while being aware of sensitivity to cultural norms. Most of all, the NASW (2008), places the responsibility on the practitioner for self-awareness of their own biases. Furthermore, practitioners must have the skills to work effectively with individuals different from one’s self (NASW, 2008).
Beck, Scheel, De Oliveira, and Hopp, (2013) realized that there was a lack of cultural competence in the university’s curriculum. Beck and his colleagues set up a program that taught students how to help clients with challenges when accessing medical care. The research method Beck and his colleagues devised were to survey nineteen female students with a mean age of twenty one. The purpose of the study was to integrate cultural competency into a one year curriculum. Student’s completed self-ratings of cultural awareness surveys every three months. Researchers tracked student self-assessments of cultural awareness by using a Likert scale (Beck, Scheel, De Oliveira, and Hopp, 2013).
Beck and colleges, (2013) had their students explore their belief and value systems. The students made personal hypotheses related to cultural diversity by taking photographs that represented their subjective meaning of cultural competence and incorporating their interpretation into an autobiography. Students focused on dimensions of culture that included religion, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status using interactive exercises, such as poverty simulations while integ...

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... -out a First-Year Physician Assistant Curriculum Steadily Improves Cultural Awareness. Journal of Physician Assistant Education, 24(2), 28-31. University, Waukesha, Wisconsin
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