General Strategies
Professionals can enhance their cultural sensitivity by:
- Becoming aware of differences in cultural attitudes toward health, disability, and illness. These differences affect attitudes toward augmentative and alternative communication devices, surgery, aggressive medication, feeding and tracheotomy tube placement, etc.
- Asking explicit questions and identifying clients' views about their problem, its cause, its appropriate treatment, and their expectations from the treatment process
- Establishing a collaborative relationship with clients' families
- Respecting a family's autonomy in decision-making
- Validating the client's or family's opinions as legitimate views of a situation-this helps to create an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect.
Specific Strategies
- Conduct in-service training using case study approaches to highlight the influence of CL variables on a particular client's functioning. In-service topics should routinely emphasize inter-cultural sensitivity and should be targeted not only to certified nursing assistants but also to other clinical and administrative staff.
- Become aware and make colleagues aware of resources and experts available through ASHA and state associations. ASHA has a registry of speakers and consultants on multicultural issues. Similarly, the California Speech-Language-Hearing Association has an online resource center that provides names and locations of bilingual SLPs.
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