A person's cultural identity exerts a profound influence on one's life ways and views.
Culture is that framework that defines, guides, and frames our life practices and beliefs.
Culture is not a set of rigid rules but an evolving pattern of shared tendencies through which our life actions and thoughts are filtered and evaluated. The diversity of our American culture has increased dramatically since 1980. Our increasingly multicultural society challenges us to develop cultural competence as an essential skill in the delivery of health care. A multicultural perspective requires that physicians are aware of the systematic dimensions of racism and alienation and attempt to understand the experiences, life-styles, and values of culturally diverse patients. Cultural competence has been defined as the ability to conduct one's professional work in a way that is congruent with the behavior and expectations that members of a distinctive culture would recognize as appropriate among themselves.