Interprofessional Awareness

Identify two areas of similarity and one difference. Explain why the standards for your profession or major are the same or different from the CLAS standards for cultural competency. Add the URL for the resource that you used for your comparison to CLAS.
I currently work at the University of Wisconsin.  UW Health has been very proactive the last few years looking at cultural diversity.  In 2016 a new CEO was introduced and he saw the importance of having a Chief Diversity Officer.  He appointed one and she worked closely to adopt the National CLAS Standards for UW Health.  
One similarity that UW Health standards has next to the National CLAS Standards is that we offer language assistance to individuals who have limited English proficiency and/or other communication needs.  The Interpreter Services department at UW Health offers in-person interpreters, interpreter services over the phone and interpreter services that are a live chat through i-Pads.  UW recognizes the importance of being profoundly committed to a diverse and inclusive environment for patients, visitors, staff and physicians. UW has included diversity as one of the performance standards for our organization. 2 Our standard states: We foster a culture of inclusion and respect among our patients, employees, learners and the communities we serve. Through teaching, discovery and advocacy, we promote equity in access to quality health care.  The CEO of UW Health hasn't made this a one time deal either.  He has made it clear as well as the Chief Diversity Officer that we are and will continue to include diversity into our work place and embrace it.  This policy and commitment by UW Health mimics the fifth CLAS standard.  
Another similarity that UW Health has compared to the National Clas Standards is that we provide easy-to-understand print and multimedia materials and signage in the languages commonly used by the populations in the service area.  Spanish is the #1 language that we have for multimedia materials besides English, but we are also seeing an increase in the Mandarin Chinese and Hmong populations.  As I spoke about in an earlier assessment, I personally worked on getting materials changed to Spanish to help with our MRI patients.  We created a presentation to be sent out to patients' MyChart account via a link on "How to Prepare for Your MRI."  It started last week in English and Interpreter Services in translating it this week in Spanish.  We have a lot of patients that get anxiety coming in for their MRI exams, and we wanted to make them feel more prepared and at ease for it.  We also have brochures that we hand to our patients before their exams to once again inform them of what they will be going through during their exam.  If the patient has a study that entails contrast and they have a reaction, we also have forms readily available to give to the patients in both English and Spanish so if they go home and still do not feel good, they can have a resource for information and a number to call for emergencies.  These are the types of pieces that make good health care even better.  Once again, this is exactly what the eighth CLAS standard projects. 
One difference that UW Health has is in it's education of diversity compared with the fourth National CLAS Standard.  UW Health is working on educating staff more on this subject.  Just recently UW has put together CBT's (Computer Based Training Modules that staff are able to take.  It is called "Unconscious Bias" and it is a forty-five minute video for staff to watch.  I am hoping within the next year this will be a mandatory video that staff have to watch.  Right now managers and directors and suppose to lead staff to this if need be.  We are also working on putting diversity into all of our practices and being more open with staff about diversity in Radiology.  We have the UW Performance Standards that all of the staff adopted through the new policy, but we are currently working on the Radiology Performance Standards to incorporate diversity within it as well. 1  One thing to add that I would like to see more of in the future, is the ability to have more diverse candidates when we hire staff.  I will be working with my director and Human Resources to make sure that we work on this as well.



Location: Madison, WI 53711, USA

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