HCA 305 - Cultural Competencies in Health Care (3 Credits)

Prerequisite: None
Health care workers in large urban centers such as New York City encounter people from a great diversity of backgrounds. This can present challenges but ultimately lead to profound and even life-changing personal and professional growth. This course provides a framework for health workers to address issues of difference from the perspectives of power, privilege, health disparities, and social justice in the United States. Through the frequent use of group exercises, case studies, and professional reflections, students will examine and analyze these concepts as well as the concept of social construction of difference. Students will explore the overlap and differences among cultural awareness, cultural sensitivity, cultural competence, cultural proficiency, and cultural respect and humility. The course will not focus on beliefs, behaviors, or customs of specific cultural groups since, in urban centers, health care workers simply cannot become familiar with the many cultures with which they are likely to interact, nor can culture and difference be simplified into clear-cut categories. The course will help students identify their own cultures, acknowledge their own biases and ways they stereotype others, recognize how privilege and power interfere with cultural respect and humility, and develop a framework for relating to people from diverse groups. The course borrows and incorporates materials from various fields including medicine, nursing, dentistry, allied health, psychology, health education, general education, and sociology.