Evaluation of the organizational cultural competence of a community health center: a multimethod approach

Measuring the Cultural Competence of Latinx Domestic Violence Service Organizations

Domestic violence (DV) represents a significant public health concern in the United States, including among Latinx populations. Despite the negative consequences associated with experiencing DV, research has shown that Latinx DV survivors may be less likely than others to utilize important services. One potential barrier is cultural competence (CC) in the provision of services specific to Latinx survivors among DV organizations. Thus, a beneficial addition to the field of DV service provision for such survivors is a better understanding and measurement of CC for this unique population. The exploratory, cross-sectional study herein presents the development and evaluation of a novel instrument for measuring the CC of DV organizations. Exploratory factor analysis was used on a purposive sample of 76 organizations in North Carolina who completed a comprehensive survey on their characteristics, practices, norms, and values. Psychometric results found best support for a 29-item, 4-factor bifactor model with both a general CC factor as well as three sub-factors. The general scale was named "General Cultural Competence," while the three sub-scales were named "Organizational Values and Procedures," "Latinx Knowledge and Inclusion," and "Latinx DV Knowledge." The final measure also demonstrated convergent validity with key organizational characteristics. Overall, higher CC scores were associated with organizations having more DV services in Spanish, a higher percentage of staff attending CC training, a higher percentage of staff attending Latinx service provision training, and a medium or greater presence in the Latinx community, and a moderate or stronger relationship with the Latinx community. The development of this measure is particularly useful in addressing knowledge gaps regarding the measurement of CC for Latinx DV services. Implications have importance for both the measurement of organizational CC and the scope of the measure's associations with organizational, provider, and client outcomes.

Determining the Organizational Cultural Competence of Hospitals Located in the Coastal Strip of the City of Antalya

AIM

This study aimed to determine the organizational cultural competence of hospitals located in the coastal strip of Antalya city in Turkey.

METHOD

The sample of this descriptive study included 31 hospitals. Data were collected with a questionnaire developed by the researchers under the guidance of 2 guides related to organizational cultural competency standards. The questionnaire included 3 sections and 47 questions and was answered by an authorized person to provide information on behalf of the hospital.

RESULTS

Among the hospitals participating in the study, 61.3% were private hospitals, 67.7% had international patient departments, 96.8% had quality departments, and 29% reported that they had a budget allocated for providing culturally appropriate care. Most of the hospitals reported that they served multi-menu option to the patients (64.5%) and provided with interpreter assistance free of cost (90.3%). Most of the hospitals stated that they provided end-of-life care for patients who died in their hospitals according to the wishes of the family members (96.8%).

CONCLUSION

Hospitals seek to adopt a culturally sensitive approach in healthcare services, but their cultural competence has scope for improvement, as they do not have strategic action plans or sufficient budgets yet.

How culturally competent are hospitals in Israel?

BACKGROUND

Cultural competence (CC) in health systems is the ability to provide care to patients with different values, beliefs and behaviors, and to match the care to their social, cultural and linguistic needs. In 2011, the Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Health issued a cultural competence directive to health care providers that sought to minimize health inequalities caused by cultural and linguistic gaps. This study assesses the status of organizational CC in Israeli general hospitals in the wake of the 2011 directive.

METHOD

Organizational CC was assessed using a 75-item structured questionnaire based on the 2011 directive and on international standards. Data were gathered via interviews conducted between December 2012 and February 2014. 35 of Israel's 36 general hospitals participated in the study, for a response rate of 97%. A composite CC score was calculated for each hospital as the average of the 75 items in the questionnaire.

RESULTS

The average composite score of all the hospitals was low to moderate (2.3 on a scale of 0-4), the median score was 2.4, and the range of composite scores was large, 0.7-3.2. The interquartile range was [1.94, 2.57]. Hospital CC is positively associated with non-private ownership status and location in the southern or central districts. Still, these differences are not statistically significant and immutable hospital characteristics such as ownership status and location account for only 21% of the inter-hospital variation in CC. This suggests that hospital leaders have significant discretion in the priority to be given to CC. Dimensions of CC with relatively low average scores include hospital connections with the community (1.28), staff training on CC (1.35), oral translation (i.e. interpreting) during treatment (1.62), and CC adaptation of human resources recruitment and evaluation (1.64). These areas appear to be particularly in need of improvement.

CONCLUSION

The study findings suggest that hospitals and policy-makers can take significant steps to improve CC; these include setting more concrete and measurable implementation guidelines. We conclude with suggestions for policy and practices to improve cultural competence in the health system.

Cultural Issues in Psychiatric Administration and Leadership

This paper addresses cultural issues in psychiatric administration and leadership through two issues: (1) the changing culture of psychiatric practice based on new clinician performance metrics and (2) the culture of psychiatric administration and leadership in light of organizational cultural competence. Regarding the first issue, some observers have discussed the challenges of creating novel practice environments that balance business values of efficient performance with fiduciary values of treatment competence. This paper expands upon this discussion, demonstrating that some metrics from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the nation's largest funder of postgraduate medical training, may penalize clinicians for patient medication behaviors that are unrelated to clinician performance. A focus on pharmacotherapy over psychotherapy in these metrics has unclear consequences for the future of psychiatric training. Regarding the second issue, studies of psychiatric administration and leadership reveal a disproportionate influence of older men in positions of power despite efforts to recruit women, minorities, and immigrants who increasingly constitute the psychiatric workforce. Organizational cultural competence initiatives can diversify institutional cultures so that psychiatric leaders better reflect the populations they serve. In both cases, psychiatric administrators and leaders play critical roles in ensuring that their organizations respond to social challenges.