The Cultural Competence Self Assessment Protocol for Health Care Organizations and Systems

The Cultural Competence Self Assessment Protocol for Health Care Organizations and Systems, developed by Dennis Andrulis, Thomas Delbanco, Laura Avakian and Yoku Shaw-Taylor, is an innovative approach to assessing organizational cultural competence. The protocol builds upon the Georgetown University Child Development Center's Continuum of Cultural Competency.

The cultural competence protocol is a tool that can be used by health care providers, including hospitals and clinics, to conduct organizational assessments of their cultural competence. It is particularly useful for services involving racially and ethnically diverse populations. The protocol’s questions are organized according to four cornerstones of cultural competence:

• a health care organization's relationship with its community;
• the administration and management's relationship with staff;
• inter-staff relationships at all levels;
• the patient/enrollee-provider encounter.

The protocol allows organizations to score responses and then place themselves on a five point spectrum of cultural competence, ranging from inaction to a fully realized "learning" organization.

The protocol has many uses. For example, it can serve as a formal organization-wide review tool or as a department- or clinic-specific assessment instrument. While the protocol is intended to be administered as a self-assessment, it is possible to use it in conjunction with an external organization. In addition, the protocol’s format requires actively engaging a broad spectrum of health care staff and encourages the use of focus groups with patients/enrollees. In all, the protocol can provide a health care organization an opportunity to assess what it does well in providing care to diverse populations, where its gaps lie, and how it could create an agenda for improving its services.

The Cultural Competence Self Assessment Protocol for Health Care Organizations and Systems
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