Culture in Clinical Care Strategies for Competence

1. Introduction: Defining Culture and Cultural Competence  2. Understanding Culture  3. Distinguishing the Cultural and the Social  4. Identifying the Personal Within the Cultural  5. Appreciating the Role of Culture in Health Care  6. Recognizing Cultural Differences: Lessons From Ethnography  7. Negotiating Cultural Differences in Working With Clients  8. Evaluating Clients and Designing Interventions in a Diverse World  9. Assessing Intercultural Interactions and Interventions  

Biography

Bette Bonder, an occupational therapist and licensed psychologist, was Emerita Professor of Health Sciences and Psychology at Cleveland State University. Recognized as one of 100 Influential Occupational Therapists in 2017, she published widely on aging, cultural competence, and mental health. Her activities before and since retirement emphasized supporting the needs of disadvantaged communities, increasing access to health care and health professional education for underrepresented groups, and enhancing the quality of graduate education.

Laura Martin, Emerita Professor at Cleveland State University, held faculty appointments in Modern Languages, Anthropology, and Health Sciences. She has taught, published, and conducted research across multiple disciplines, and has engaged in field research and collaborative projects on topics ranging from Spanish dialectology and conservation biology to art history and migrant education. A former Fulbright Fellow, in retirement she has served as a volunteer docent for the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Nicole D’Alessandro is a writer and editor who specializes in health and environmental topics, having worked for or collaborated with such institutions as Thomson Reuters, the Environmental Law Institute, Case Western Reserve University, and Cleveland State University. She has also written articles on another major interest, architecture, and is a visual artist who exhibits regularly in photography, textile art, and book art shows.

Aphrodite Papadakis is a board-certified family physician and medical educator with more than 20 years of clinical experience. She serves as Residency Program Director at MetroHealth Medical Center and Co-Director of the Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, where she is an Assistant Professor. She is dedicated to advancing patient-centered care, with interests in diabetes management, wellness, and effective communication between clinicians and patients.

Praise for Second Edition

“The strongest part of the book is the development of skills and abilities of the ethnographic mindset: curiosity, imagination, empathy, etc., considering where one is positioned both physically and metaphorically in the encounter with other human beings, then having the capacity to take the ethnographic mindset into approaching assessment, client-centered goal setting, and intervention...Bonder and Martin’s book does an exemplary job of positioning the discussion of cultural competence outside a framework of a dominant culture that recognizes other cultures.”
Carla Wilhite, University of New Mexico, Doody’s Review Service

“The authors’ desire for maximum engagement between the reader and the text is clear from the most cursory glance at the book.  Each chapter begins with a clear list of learner objectives, while the numerous reflective questions provoke an enquiring reader to pause, reflect, be curious, and thus discover the nuances of their own cultural beliefs.  The ancillary material accessible on the internet and the availability of an instructor’s manual make the book an appropriate resource for students and workshop participants; however, due to the interactive design, it would also be a valuable resource for any occupational therapy practitioner engaged in personal reflective practice.”
Catherine Beynon-Pindar, Senior Occupational Therapist, The Retreat, York, British Journal of Occupational Therapy