Patient Care: Cultural Humility and Cultural Competence

In the medical context, cultural humility may be defined as a process of being aware of how people's culture can impact their health behaviours and in turn using this awareness to cultivate sensitive approaches in treating patients. Culturally competent care assumes that healthcare providers can ‘learn a quantifiable set of attitudes and communication skills’ that will allow them to work effectively within the cultural context of the patients they come across. Cultural competence is the ability to engage knowledgeably with people across cultures. Developing cultural humility in itself is a prerequisite to cultural competency. It does so by forming a foundation for healthcare providers to consider possible power imbalances that may arise between a doctor and patient when cultural differences may have an impact on the potential clinical outcome for the patient.