Measuring Cultural Competence from a global perspective

Abstract

Background: The United States is compiled of various races, religions and cultures and thrives on this diversity. Healthcare professionals in the US provide services to this diverse society. In order to do so effectively they must embrace cultural competence as an essential component in their delivery of services. Therefore, the ability to measure cultural competency levels is essential for healthcare professionals and educators. Given that a consistent method using a global worldview perspective to assess one’s cultural competence in the practice of patient centered care is not present, the purpose of the study was to develop a valid and reliable tool that could be used to assess cultural competence in healthcare professionals utilizing the Purnell Global (worldview) Model for Cultural Competence established in 1991 Purnell. Methods: For content validity six experts participated in two Delphi Rounds resulting in 80% agreement for all survey questions addressing their appropriateness, clarity, sequentially and construct. To establish internal consistency data from 42 health professional students who completed the Global (worldview) Cultural Competence Survey were tallied and the Cronbach’s alpha of .819 was obtained. Discussion/Conclusion: Assessing cultural competence levels of health professionals and students is important as we seek to provide culturally competent care to diverse populations of patients. Based upon the study findings the Global (worldview) Cultural Competence Survey is a valid and reliable tool to assess cultural competency in health professionals and students. Using a pre-post intervention design faculty can use this tool to assess the effectiveness of educational strategies employed to develop cultural competency levels in health profession students.