Cultural Competence Training for CNAs: A Diverse Approach

Cultural competence training for CNAs is essential in creating a more inclusive and understanding healthcare environment. This blog explores the importance of diversity education and training in the workforce.

Nursing staff, especially CNAs, who spend countless hours at the bedside, must understand how to provide culturally sensitive and competent care. However, many CNAs don’t have these skills, especially if you hire new grads who have recently transitioned from students to professionals. 

CNAs must know how to perform more than bathing, feeding, and dressing. While these are pivotal skills for their profession, providing culturally competent care requires them to weave sensitivity, understanding, tolerance, and respect into their daily clinical practices. 

It’s critical to note that cultural competence is a more significant issue than just training your workforce. Building a culturally competent organization can set you apart as a care facility and employer. It requires intention and specialized education for staff development to enhance their ability to care for individuals from diverse and minority backgrounds. This knowledge empowers them to understand and appreciate different cultures, establishing meaningful connections with patients and improving patient satisfaction and overall healthcare outcomes. 

What is a Culturally Competent Organization?

A culturally competent organization possesses knowledge about the different groups of people it serves. It then transforms this information into policies and practices to empower staff to deliver care that embraces diversity and cultural sensitivity. Culturally competent organizations are intentional about training and implementing cultural practices rather than assuming that staff will absorb these practices over time. 

Cultural competence training empowers CNAs with valuable insights into the impact of cultural norms, values, and beliefs on health, illness, and healthcare practices. It provides classroom or online coursework to establish the foundational knowledge needed to deliver holistic care. Education can also include hands-on training methods such as case studies and live interactions with other staff or patients to practice new skills and receive feedback on how they handle specific situations. Placing your CNAs in the role of students provides the practical knowledge to navigate cultural differences with sensitivity and respect, ensuring they can meet each patient's unique needs.

Improving cultural competence allows staff to deliver sensitive care and gives them insight into how health disparities can impact care delivery. They will start to recognize that socioeconomics, health literacy, race, minority populations, and other factors can influence how a patient seeks and receives care. CNAs contribute to the organization’s overall cultural competence by acknowledging these disparities and working towards equitable healthcare delivery. 

Key Skills for Culturally Competent CNAs

Now that you know what it means to be a culturally competent organization, you might wonder what skills you need to teach. Let’s review the top five skills your nursing workforce needs to provide competent care. 

Skill 1: Active Listening and Effective Communication

CNAs must possess stellar active listening and effective communication skills to provide culturally competent care. These skills allow them to listen to patients' concerns, experiences, and preferences, better understand their cultural perspectives, and provide appropriate care. Developing this skill requires practice and receiving real-time feedback that CNAs can use to improve their skills and abilities. 

Skill 2: Respecting Preferences

Many residents have dietary and other preferences directly related to cultural or religious practices. It is critical to educate CNAs about the most common practices they may encounter on the job. You must also educate them on navigating sensitive situations they don’t fully understand or agree with. Learning opportunities might include role-play situations related to dietary choices or working through situations that require escalation to a supervisor for further education and training on cultural sensitivity and creating an inclusive healthcare environment.

Skill 3: Promoting Cultural Expression

Training your CNAs to embrace and promote cultural expression helps your staff and residents feel understood and valued. Teaching others to promote cultural expression is fun because it allows the organization to embrace the cultural differences of staff and residents. Encourage your workforce to share their cultural experiences and celebrations and empower them to celebrate with residents too. 

Skill 4: Understanding and Respecting Religious and Spiritual Beliefs

Providing education on spiritual and religious beliefs is a foundational way to teach CNAs to understand and respect these practices. Once empowered with this knowledge, they can work on expressing their respect for different beliefs. Educational training sessions can include scenario-based lessons that allow students to navigate situations in a safe space where they receive coaching and feedback.

Skill 5: Understanding Cultural Sensitivities

CNAs will encounter culturally sensitive situations such as illness, death, or caring for someone who chooses a treatment they disagree with. Understanding cultural sensitivities is crucial and can develop a good CNA into a great one. Training about cultural sensitivity requires you to help students imagine themselves in the other person’s situation. You can do this through role-play and scenario-based learning. 

The Future of a Culturally Competent Healthcare Workforce

Finding culturally competent CNAs is essential to the daily operations of facilities aiming to be culturally competent healthcare organizations. This is especially true as patient populations evolve and become more diverse. 

Embracing diversity in your workforce is another way to express your organization’s cultural competence further. In fact, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing reports that more diverse healthcare workforces are better equipped to care for diverse patient populations. 

Diversity among patients requires a nursing workforce that understands the importance of cultural competence and sensitivity and can easily apply these principles. Healthcare organizations must prioritize cultural competence training and education to ensure that their workforce reflects the diversity of the communities they serve.

By investing in the development of culturally competent CNAs, healthcare organizations can improve patient outcomes, enhance patient satisfaction, and foster a more inclusive and welcoming healthcare environment. These skills will contribute to reducing healthcare disparities and promoting health equity for all individuals.

Cultural competence in clinical practice plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of holistic patient care. CNAs' unique perspectives and understanding of cultural and minority population nuances will inform decision-making processes and contribute to developing more comprehensive and culturally sensitive healthcare strategies.

The future of the healthcare and nursing workforce lies in embracing cultural competence as a core competency for all healthcare professionals, including CNAs. By doing so, you can create a healthcare system that truly meets the diverse needs of your communities and ensures equitable access to quality care.