3 Provide spiritual care that respects diversity, relative to differences in race, culture, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
If you feel like you are stepping into chaplaincy from a mostly homogenized background and experience, you may want to get a part-time job in the restaurant industry to grow your PPS3 competency. Restaurant and Healthcare industries typically rank higher than other industries when it comes to a diverse entry-level workforce. Patients and staff will come from all kinds of backgrounds and the chaplain will need to provide care that is open and honoring of their recipient’s self-understanding.
To be proficient at demonstrating this competence the practice of cultural humility is essential to incorporate. Cultural humility “involves the ability to maintain an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented (or open to the other) in relation to aspects of cultural identity that are most important to the client.”[1] One tool for this conversation is the patient dignity question developed by Dr. Chochinov, “What do I need to know about you as a person to give you the best care possible?”[2]
Cultural competency has been a valuable resource in many of the health sciences for increasing knowledge and awareness. Except for the cases when a shallow grasp of cultural competence leads someone to think, “I work with (insert race, culture, gender) all the time, have a proven track record, and they love me. This next patient will be similar.” Instead, “Culturally humble therapists rarely assume competence (i.e., letting prior experience and even expertise lead to overconfidence) for working with clients just based on their prior experience working with a particular group.”[3]
Some programs in cultural competence have contributed to an amplification of “us versus them” orientations and solidified social stereotypes.[4] Thankfully, PPS3 is about the recipient’s self-understanding. A culturally humble approach will “allow the patient to determine how much bearing their culture has on their health concern.”[5] If we combine PIC 2 with this competency there are some great resources with the Harvard Implicit Association Test[6] and the Health Habitus Integration.[7] These assessments may be difficult because of the internal sludge they bring up in what you thought was clean water. Remember that the pursuit of mutual benefit and optimal care for the people we encounter is a worthy enough cause to grow our own capacity for openness, self-awareness, reflection, and more.[8]
[1] Joshua N Hook et. al., “Cultural Humility: Measuring Openness to Culturally Diverse Clients,” Journal of Counseling Psychology 60, no. 3 (2013): 353–66.
[2] Dignity in Care, “The Patient Dignity Question,” Last modified, 2022, https://dignityincare.ca/en/the-patient-dignity-question.html.
[3] Hook, Cultural Humility, 354.
[4] Helen-Maria Lekas, Kerstin Pahl, and Crystal Fuller Lewis. “Rethinking Cultural Competence: Shifting to Cultural Humility,” Health Services Insights 13 (January 2020): 2.
[5] Stephane M Shepherd, “Cultural Awareness Workshops: Limitations and Practical Consequences,” BMC Medical Education vol. 19, (2019): 7.
[6] Harvard, “Preliminary Information,” Project Implicit. Last modified 2011, https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html.
[7] Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, “Center for Research on Cultural & Structural Equity in Behavioral Health,” https://www.nki.rfmh.org/lab/center-for-research-on-cultural-structural-equity-in-behavioral-health-c-case/.
[8] Cynthia Foronda et. al., “Cultural Humility,” Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 27, no. 3 (2016): 215.
Leave a Reply