Learning Goals

Client Diversity in Health Sciences from the IT Guy's perspective

After reflecting on the course competencies and my dismal performance on the quality and culture self-assesment, here are my three goals for this course:

1. Attain the ability to recognize cultural issues in both my personal and professional environments.

Based on the competency of "demonstrate[s] strategies to apply cultural competency in professional and personal environments" and my incorrect answer to the question about conscientiously  eliminating prejudices, I think that a good goal is simply to train myself to have the presence of mind to watch for behaviors in myself and others that are culturally inappropriate.

2. Reach a higher level of understanding how different cultures approach the "work" environment. 

Since I work in information technology, I work closely with many people from the country of India. I think that understanding the culture of co-workers, especially if it is quite different from your own, is an important aspect of diversity and inclusion whether you work in health care or technology. One of my co-workers, specifically, has a work ethic that borders on relentless, to the point of causing him health issues.

3. Understand better the impact of culturally inappropriate behaviors on the workplace.

I have learned, mostly through military training, that there are gestures, phrases and many aspects of language and body language that mean vastly different things in different cultures.  I was trained specifically how to interact with Iraqi civilians, keeping in mind things that seem innocuous to Americans that Iraqis may find horribly offensive.  Despite that training, I got the question about gestures "bridging the communication gap" wrong.