Abstract
This workshop looks at culturally safe, responsive care at end of life during COVID-19 in the Australian context. Based on cultural diversity training delivered at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne (SVHM) since 2015 as part of the Advance Care Planning (ACP) workshop, this session covers defusing strategies and cultural fluency to ensure effective communication at end of life care as well as lessons learnt from incidents in the hospital setting. Particular attention is paid to the clinical encounter, communicating difficult news to patients and their families of culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) backgrounds, communication styles, unconscious bias, and health literacy. Cultural competency is best supported by raising awareness of the participants’ cultural self, develop the participants’ skills and expand on their knowledge base when managing challenging cross-cultural conversations at end of life. The self-assessment exercises in this workshop therefore focus on cross-cultural communication skills: i) indirect/direct and high/low context communication styles ii) how the power distance relationship between a patient and health professional influences the communication process and iii) how one might approach hope VS truth telling to CaLD patients when discussing diagnosis and prognosis.In addition to the interactive presentation, this workshop also includes research based evidence to allow the audience to step through the cross cultural elements at play and gain a deeper understanding of cross cultural communication. Practice implications include a greater sensitivity, cultural competency, and awareness when communicating with patients or clients and their families who are of a CaLD background.
Presenters
Monita Mascitti MeuterCultural Inclusion Lead, Mission, St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
KEYWORDS
Cross-Cultural Communication, Cultural Responsiveness, Cultural Safety, End of life Care
