Notes on article by S. Saha, MD et al. “Patient Centeredness, Cultural Competence and Healthcare Quality”

While the patient centerdness (PC) and cultural competence (CC) essentially have developed from two different focus points, they both aim at improving the quality of healthcare. The people who have worked on the development of the models essentially seemed to have similar understanding of the values of the World and and followed similar intentions to help patients feel better not only on a physical level.

“Just as proponents of cultural competence might embrace most aspects of patient centeredness, it is likely that propo- nents of patient centeredness would also embrace these additional features of cultural competence. “ p.1281

This quote sums up this idea – that to be a proponent of cultural competence one must possess certain personal characteristics that happen to be similar to those necessary for one who is a proponent of patient centeredness. In other words, the two approaches are two parts of one big movement in the improvement of the healthcare system. 

Based on the high similarity in the ways the two approaches aim to improve the health care system, we may think that it might be only common sense to unite the two and combine efforts into a single agenda. Yet, while many features are similar, many important areas of focus of each movement have not yet been adopted by the other. These uniques features carry the potential to improve the quality of healthcare, so, it would be a loss to leave them out of the one united movement. This is why the authors propose that the two approaches remain separate, while the effort to incorporate them into medical practices should be equal.