Perhaps you haven't experienced quite this many culture clashes with patients in one day. However, if you're a physician who has limited exposure to the health care traditions of other cultures, you've likely come across as lacking cultural competence to at least one patient at some time in your career and you may not even know it. This double standard is crumbling a bit as the 20th century winds down. America is now a multicultural society.
Patients can now find physicians of their same ethnicity, if they so choose.
In 1990, the share of the American population with white ethnic European roots stood at 75 percent. By the year 2020, however, this percentage will likely fall to around 53 percent, with Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and American Indians showing a higher population growth. The U.S. Hispanic and Asian population will triple over the next quarter century, and the Black population will double. These growing groups expect health care that is in sync with cultural traditions. This will place greater demands on physicians to deal effectively with patients outside their own cultural scope.