Diversity Definitions

Cultural sensitivity is critical to providing quality healthcare and ensuring successful patient outcomes. Understanding the diverse values, beliefs and behaviors of individual patients allows healthcare professionals to tailor their delivery to meet patients' social, cultural and linguistic needs. Likewise, we need to understand how our own cultural influences may affect perceptions, diagnoses and interactions with patients and colleagues. By understanding both ourselves and prospective patients as best as possible, healthcare professionals are best equipped to handle any patient they encounter, facilitate patient access and achieve the most successful patient outcomes possible. Specifically, this badge demonstrates the earner's ability to define diversity and related terms and concepts including how diversity is expressed, assimilation and pluralism, the dimensions of diversity, diversity within and among groups, diversity myths, diversity consciousness, and strategies for diversity education.