Providing culturally responsible health care to Pacific Islander communities: The creation of a cultural competency training for healthcare professionals

ABSTRACT

Cultural competency is the ability to respectfully engage, understand, and communicate through conscientious interaction, enabling effective work and meaningful relationships in cross-cultural situations. Cultural competency recognizes the importance for organizations of participants' diverse social and cultural values, beliefs, and behaviors, and has gained attention because it can bridge health perspectives, understanding, and respect between health professionals and patients. There remains a need for cultural competency in healthcare as disparities persist across the U.S. in racial and ethnic minority groups who experience worse health outcomes and lower healthcare quality than the general public. Therefore, a cultural competency training curriculum was created using various resources to improve interactions between Pacific Islander patients and healthcare professionals. This training helps to reduce racial/ethnic disparities in healthcare by encouraging mutual understanding and improving patient satisfaction, adherence to medical instructions, and overall health outcomes by highlighting patient-centered care as a result of utilizing components of cultural competency. To improve patient experiences in Hawai'i, healthcare professionals need the tools to better interact with patients from different cultures, such as Pacific Islanders. This training provides healthcare professionals with culturally-based content for improving cultural competence techniques for interacting with Pacific Island patients. This training was pilot tested with key stakeholders from community organizations and Cancer Center faculty/staff. Local health clinics, providers, and practices will have the opportunity to participate in this training through a Zoombased electronic training format and be provided with three continuing medical education credits. The initial delivery of the training was intended for in-person sessions;however, a virtual format was adapted due to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent social distancing regulations. Healthcare providers are provided pre-training resources, a pre- and post-test, and a course evaluation to determine the validity of training objectives. To date, two Federally Qualified Health Centers have been provided the training, n=60, as well as one Cancer Health Equity Partnerships' Scientific Workshop, n=40. For attendees, the analysis of correct responses from the pretest to post-test showed a significant improvement on 6 of the 12 questions. Respondents also agreed that the training resources aligned with the course objectives. Improved patient interactions from this training can help support better patient outcomes, adherence to medical advice regarding cancer screenings, and many other aspects of improving health equity for Pacific Islanders.