Improving Communication between Health Care Professionals and their Spanish-Speaking Patients

Improving Communication between Health Care Professionals and their Spanish-Speaking Patients - Course Information

Background

This course was developed under a grant from the Health Education Training Center (HETC). Under the direction of Karen Hanford, Dean of the College of Graduate Nursing (CGN) at Western University of Health Sciences, a multifaceted program was developed to address the need for culturally competent care providers and to address the critical shortage of nurses within the San Bernardino and Imperial border counties of California. The project initially focused on the needs of Hispanic patients, and need to improve the representation of Hispanic health care professionals, the most underrepresented group in the state's health care workforce.

This project, like the graduate nursing curriculum itself, is in accord with the beliefs declared by the National Alliance of Hispanic Health: "We cannot afford to let cultural barriers limit our ability to meet the needs of our patients, or reduce their opportunity to benefit from the services we can provide." CGN began the project by developing a partnership agreement with the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health to develop an online cultural competency-training program. This program-which will be replicated in other border counties after the grant period-is designed to instruct public health nurses and ancillary support staff in San Bernardino County to provide appropriate and culturally aware health services. This project is aligned with HETC's mandate to meet the persistent and severe unmet health care needs in border states through culturally competent care.