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For Health Professionals

Diversity & Inclusion

Bringing history, characteristics, and skills to our jobs every day.

A Great Place to Work Why is This Important?

A Great Place to Work

ChristianaCare is a great place to work in part because of the uniqueness of our employees, volunteers, and affiliated health professionals.

Each one of us brings our own history, characteristics, and skills to our jobs every day.

Our individual backgrounds and perspectives help us provide the best health care possible. Collectively, we can better serve our patients with empathy, understanding, and respect.

This inclusive culture helps everyone have the opportunity to fully engage and embrace their uniqueness. In an ever-changing environment, fostering inclusion is important to advancing transformation in how we treat others and care for our patients. We seek to raise awareness of our commitment to creating a culture of inclusion and continue to learn from and grow with one another.

Diversity
Inclusion
Cultural Competence
Disparity

Diversity is about the unique characteristics that make up each one of us including the items that are regularly measured such as: age, gender, race, income level, marital status, religion, veteran status, educational background and geographic location.

But it also includes the many other “parts” of each person such as physical ability, sexual orientation, culture, ethnicity, lifestyle, national origin, parental status, personality, personal/Work experiences, thought processes and work style.

Inclusion is creating a sense of belonging, feeling respected, valued and seen for who we are as individuals while ensuring that all people have the opportunity to fully engage and embrace their strengths of our differences so that collectively, we can do our best work to accomplish our goals.

Cultural Competence is the ability of health care providers and organizations to understand and respond effectively to the cultural and language needs brought by the patient to the health care encounter. Culture competence requires organizations and their personnel to: 1) value diversity; 2) assess themselves; 3) manage the dynamics of difference; 4) acquire and institutionalize cultural knowledge; and 5) adapt to diversity and the cultural contexts of individuals and communities served.

Disparity was the original term used to focus attention on differences in health and healthcare. It connotes differences between groups in the quality of care, which are not due to access, preferences, or appropriateness of care. Now the terminology is moving to “equity”. It is a term that has less connotation of blame or deficiency of care, more connotation of good health and healthcare as being a right, and reflects our need to take positive action to make improvements for all groups and individuals.

But Why is This Important?

The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that within the next 50 years, nearly one half (48%) of the nation’s population will be from cultures other than White, non-Hispanic.
By 2030, people of color will comprise nearly 28% of Delaware population, up from 23% in 2000.
The Joint Commission has developed new standards that will be in effect by 2011 for Cultural Competent Patient-Centered Care and Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS).