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August 2009 | Dental Products Report  Photo: Image Source/Anderson Ross/Thomas Northcut/Getty Images Diversity in dentistry As the patient population becomes more diverse, your office should reflect this in staff and in practice. The set-up “One of the principal responsibilities of every healthcare professional is patient education. To properly educate, we need to be able to communicate effectively with the patient. In this article, Terri Tilliss, RDH, PhD, explores the important subject of patient communication.” —Dr. Peter Cabrera, Team lead Diversity in America is a reality with major impact, and that holds true in the dental office. To treat and prevent oral disease, you must be able to communicate with your patients, regardless of their cultural and religious backgrounds. You and your team members need to gain their trust, to build a rapport. That’s difficult to do if all team members don’t have some understanding of the patient’s cultural background or anyone on staff he or she can relate to. Diversity and healthcare Healthcare providers must be increasingly sensitive to patients from a variety of cultures, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and they must be able to communicate with a diverse group of patients on a daily basis—whether they’re working in small rural towns or large urban centers. This means healthcare providers encounter, and must learn to manage, complex differences in communication styles, attitudes, expectations and world views. And when you’re talking with patients about home care, the oral-systemic link and pocket depth, it can prove to be a challenging conversation even when there are no cultural issues. Add language and cultural differences and getting your message across becomes even more difficult, and this can negatively affect patient understanding, case acceptance and compliance. To take on these challenges, the healthcare workforce needs to be culturally and linguistically competent and, ideally, represent diversity. Why it matters One reason to develop a more diverse representation among healthcare providers is some patients prefer to seek care from providers of their own race, ethnicity or language group. Such concordance can have a positive impact on treatment participation, and receipt of services. Access to healthcare is negatively affected by the cultural background, biases and language barriers that are part of the healthcare provider system. A diverse staff can make your patients more comfortable, and more likely to accept treatment and change home care habits that may be hurting their oral health. Improving care Being culturally sensitive leads to improved outcomes such as health services use, satisfaction and increased knowledge. You and your team should be aware of cultural practices that may present in the dental setting. Here are a few examples:
Making a change As diversity continues to grow in the patient population, there has been a push for the dental office to reflect this. “We’re committed to changing the profile of practicing dentists to better reflect the overall population of the United States,” said Dr. Peter Robinson, Chair of the American Dental Association Council on Dental Education and Licensure’s Ad-Hoc Committee on Diversity to Attract Qualified Underrepresented Minorities into Dentistry. “We don’t know all the reasons for this, but there is ample evidence that black dentists treat a much higher percentage of black patients and Hispanic dentists treat a much higher percentage of Hispanic patients. Part of the answer is where practices are located, and that there is a tendency for black dentists and Hispanic dentists to open their practices in areas that are more accessible to people of color.”1 CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
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