Cultural Competency Project
The main reason behind the creation of Salud was to educate and implement cultural competency as well as cultural sensitivity within the health care system via series of workshops at local health institutions. The idea behind these workshops was to raise the level of awareness of health care workers concerning the Hispanic/Latino community with the goal of helping them to serve their needs in the best and most efficient way possible.
Beginning August 2001, Salud began monthly cultural competency workshops at Union Memorial Hospital. Each workshop had two main speakers from community health organizations to convey the important elements of Hispanic/Latino culture and practical advice about the procedure of incorporating this new understanding into the health care setting. Based on participant evaluations, we modified the workshops to include a third presentation consisting of a language component. During this section, we provided one-to-one practice of a very short, basic Spanish conversation that is meant to help greet and reassure the patient that an interpreter will arrive to assist them. In addition, workshops included cultural exposure in the form of Hispanic/Latino food.
In 2003, we began conducting workshops for medical students at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. This workshops, a shortened version with one speaker, aimed to educate future health care providers of the cultural and linguistic barriers encountered by this population and to encourage the application of this new knowledge in the future. These workshops were held in collaboration with the medical students of MEDSOL.
We hope to expand the workshop program to other hospitals, clinics, and medical as well as nursing school students. We are very interested in holding these workshops with other students groups that might be interested in this important matter.
NEW!
The Cultural competency project SALUD Cultural competency workshop Series will showcase a variety of speakers on a wide variety of topics relating to cultural competency. The workshops will target health care providers and help them increase the quality of care for their patients, in particular immigrant/minority populations that require a greater degree of cultural sensitivity.
If you want to get involved there are a number of things volunteers can do such as help prepare the workshops, represent SALUD at the workshops, and even learn about how to coordinate and setup workshops in case one is interested in running for this position next year.
>>> Contact: Danny Estupinan destup2974@hotmail.com
