Cultural competence in person- centred care

Broadly speaking, cultural competence is the capacity of the health workforce to respond to cultural diversity within the clinical environment. Culturally appropriate person-centred healthcare requires the health workforce, individually and collectively, to understand and respect variations in patient health beliefs, values, preferences, behaviours, symptom recognition, thresholds for seeking care, expectations of healthcare, compliance, and attitudes to imaging procedures. Cultural competence is also a key strategy for tackling healthcare inequities. Since cultural competence relates to institutional attitudes and behaviours, strategies to drive person-centred care through cultural acuity needs to be reinforced by institutional policy and practice. Development of cultural competence requires a degree of emotional acuity. Emotional intelligence among the medical imaging and therapy team improves patient care and contributes to person-centred healthcare. For radiography, nuclear medicine and radiotherapy, it is crucial for person-centred care strategies to have a foundation of emotional competence among staff and within the institution. Development of skills and capabilities in cultural competence and emotional intelligence tends to rely on organic learning from hidden curricula or incidental/accidental experience and observation. More deliberate and formal learning and familiarity with the tools for development and application of both cultural competence and emotional intelligence is an essential scaffold for establishment of person-centred care environments in radiology and nuclear medicine.