Ethnic and Cultural Diversity in Hospitals: Why is it necessary?

By the year 2050, researchers estimate that minorities will make up 50% of the United States’ total population. Demographically, the healthcare system should reflect such a distribution, yet it has dramatically fallen short. For example, although African Americans make up about 15% of the US population, they only represent 7% of all medical doctors. The lack of diversity present in today’s healthcare model has proven to have extremely detrimental effects on patient outcomes. In areas with non-diverse hospital staff, minorities suffer worse outcomes and lack patient satisfaction, providers perform poorly in comparison to their diverse hospital counterparts, and health disparity rates are on the rise. 

A recent initiative gaining popularity in healthcare facilities across the nation is cultural competence training, which seeks to educate professionals about the value of diversity, raise awareness about the various types of cultures, and address how to respond to and learn about cultural differences. Though this type of mandatory training is crucial as it helps healthcare workers provide thoughtful care, there is an important distinction to be made as this training is not a substitute for increased ethnic and cultural diversity in the workplace. 

Diverse populations have diverse needs. Especially for groups that experience racial disparities in health, largely caused by food insecurity, inadequate transportation, and access to education, quality care is especially important because they often require more extensive and complex treatment. Even with adjusting for socioeconomic factors, differences in outcomes for minorities have been shown to be worse, reflecting the lack of adequate care. More diverse health staff can help reduce these disparities by treating patients through a larger lens of cultural awareness and providing the personalized care plan that each patient requires. In addition, patients may be more comfortable being treated by someone similar to them in both appearances and in a cultural sense, such as speaking the same language. These meaningful connections can help patients become more agreeable and ease into treatment while being more likely to be active in the shared decision-making portion and execution of a treatment plan. Statistics have shown that in areas with staffing with a broad range of ethnic identities, rates of patient satisfaction, compliance, and recoveries have increased.

Diversity holds great implications for the role of a healthcare provider role. Considering, assessing, and incorporating different thought processes to reach a conclusion is an essential skill that healthcare providers require. Many perspectives that arise from differences in backgrounds and practice can provide feedback that can contradict or misalign a person’s point of view leading to healthy debates that challenge participants’ perspectives while encouraging diverse contributions and critical thinking. One meta-analysis study found that greater diversity helps improve accuracy in both diagnoses and decision-making in a variety of specialties, showing the importance of a wide scope of informed opinions. In the same vein, the study found that adapting to diversity increases ‘cognitive flexibility’ in providers by promoting creativity and helping to break tightly held conformity standards.

“Considering, assessing, and incorporating different thought processes to reach a conclusion is an essential skill that healthcare providers require. “

Efforts to increase cultural diversity should not be limited to providers, however, as healthcare leadership is largely homogenous, with white individuals making up a staggering 98% of senior healthcare management.  By increasing diversity in this domain, women and minorities can become top performers, paving a path to equity as well as representation. 

It is clear that steps must be undertaken to prioritize diversity in healthcare settings. A way that organizations can successfully grow and maintain diversity is to focus on initiatives that uplift minorities and prioritize diversity within the organization. Supplemented to this should be diversity-friendly policies, that help to foster a welcoming and open environment. In addition, communication between different groups within the healthcare system is key to maintaining such efforts so that diversity is represented at all levels of the hospital, from the leaders to the executors. Finally, engaging students and promoting early exposure to health is important to ensure that there is a sustainable influx of diverse individuals joining the workforce.

Diversity is scarce in healthcare, yet it is a necessity. It is our duty to invest in this demographic transformation of the healthcare system to ensure quality outcomes, satisfaction from patients, and optimal provider practice for all.