User:Malll2/Cultural sensitivity

Cultural Sensitivity
Cultural sensitivity, also sometimes referred to as cross-cultural sensitivity or simply cultural awareness, is the knowledge, awareness, and acceptance of other cultures and others' cultural identities. When explaining cultural sensitivity diversity among cultures must be recognized, and the diversity within them must be recognized.

Cultural sensitivity is related to cultural competence which are the skills needed for effective communication with people of other cultures, which includes cross-cultural competence, and sometimes regarded as the precursor to the achievement of cultural competence, but is a more widely used term than cultural competence. Cultural competence is also the ability to understand other people's perspectives, values, beliefs, behaviors, communication styles etc.

Factors that affect cultural sensitivity
Certain factors can affect cultural sensitivity. These factors include religion, ethnicity(race), national origin(language), or gender. Others areas to look at include age, education, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, and mental/physical challenges. Past studies have identified a positive correlation between multicultural experiences and cultural sensitivity.

Cultural self-assessment
It is important to understand how ones personal actions and beliefs can affect others. The most important actions are the ones that are usually taken for granted.

For instance, physical distance/ touch during social interactions varies by culture. Touch is a fundamental requirement for our wellbeing, yet the amount of touch people receive across different cultures varies significantly. Some cultures stand closer to each other, make more eye contact, speak louder and incorporate touch more frequently while others don't.

In the dominant culture
Cultural awareness and sensitivity helps to overcome one's personal ethnocentrism, mainly by learning about other cultures and how various modes and expectations may differ from one's own in various areas, from ethical, religious and social attitudes to body language and other nonverbal communication. Cultural sensitivity is just one dimension of cultural competence, and has an impact on ethnocentrism and other factors related to culture. The results of developing cultural sensitivity are positive: communication is improved, leading to more effective interaction between the people concerned, and improved outcome or interventions for the client or customer.

It is taught in many workplaces, as it is an essential skill for managing and building teams in a multicultural society. Intercultural communication has been cited as one of the two biggest challenges within the workplace, along with internal communications (mission statement, meetings, etc.), particularly in agribusiness in the US.

In healthcare
Cultural competent help care requires being sensitive to the differences between groups and also to the attitudes and meanings attached to emotional events such as depression and pain.

Cultural sensitivity training in health care providers can improve the satisfaction and health outcomes of patients from different minority groups. Because standard measures for diagnosis and prognosis relate to established norms, cultural sensitivity is essential, because a person's norms are defined by their culture, and these may differ significantly from the treating medical professional. Language barriers, beliefs and trust are just a few of the factors to consider when treating patients of other cultural groups. It is important to understand the concept behind the "buzzword" in the healthcare setting, as it can, for example, increase nurses' appreciation of and communication with other professionals as well as clients.

In nursing
Nurses play a key role in patient care and often face challenges when working with culturally diverse patients. The beliefs, values, and health- related practices of some patients may impact nearly every step of the healthcare process. Understanding those factors is the key to providing effective care. A tip to providing cultural sensitive care is to develop cultural competence as an ongoing process, nurses and employers should be committed to educating themselves about different patients' beliefs, values, and perspectives.

Bennett scale Milton Bennett was the first to create a model or framework designed to help comprehension of various stages of "cultural sensitivity”.
He said that he developed the framework of the model to show the " intercultural sensitivity" a person may experience. Intercultural sensitivity is defined as an individual's ability to develop emotion towards understanding and appreciating cultural differences that promotes appropriate and effective behavior in intercultural communication” '''. The model is also known as the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity '''(DIMS),or simply referred to as the Bennett Scale. The Bennet scale has been developed over several decades, since 1986 , and is included in The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication (2017)  .

According to Bennett, “As one’s perceptual organization of cultural difference becomes more complex, one’s experience of culture becomes more sophisticated and the potential for exercising competence in intercultural relations increases. By recognizing how cultural difference is being experienced, predictions about the effectiveness of intercultural communication can be made.

Bennett describes a continuum, which moves from ethnocentrism to "ethnorelativism". The model includes six stages of experiencing difference.

The six stages explained in the model include :


 * Denial - when people fail to recognize distinctions among cultures or consider them to be irrelevant
 * Defense - people perceive other cultures in a competitive way, or in a us-against-them way.{IE: immigrants taking other peoples jobs}
 * Minimization - people assume that their distinct cultural worldview is shared by others, or when they perceive their culture’s values as fundamental or universal human values that apply to everyone.
 * Acceptance - recognize that different beliefs and values are shaped by culture,
 * Adaptation - when people are able to adopt the perspective of another culture,
 * Integration - someone’s identity or sense of self evolves to incorporate the values, beliefs, perspectives, and behaviors of other cultures.