Improving Awareness and Cultural Humility Through a Self-Study Module

Purpose: The purpose of this quality improvement project is to improve healthcare worker awareness and cultural humility through a self-study training module as a means of improving patient care. Background. The United States has experienced an increase in the growth of minority populations, which is anticipated to continue. Healthcare worker awareness and cultural humility can influence patient satisfaction, patient involvement, and, ultimately, health outcomes. Using the Precaution Adoption Process Model as a conceptual framework, it was anticipated that training healthcare workers on awareness and cultural humility would move participants from being unaware, unengaged, and undecided to being active and decisive in addressing any deficiencies that could threaten the quality of care they provide to diverse populations. While there have been a number of studies documenting the effects of interventions similar to the one used in this project, this project is unique in that the intervention is a self-study module. Methods. Providers and support staff (n=54) participated in a one-hour training module on awareness and cultural humility that was developed through examination of the literature and the author's professional observations in caring for diverse populations. Participant demographic variables were measured and described using frequency distributions and summary statistics. Pre- and post-training survey quantitative data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test. Pre- and post-training open-ended questions were analyzed using content analysis. Results. Pre- and post-training survey data for a total of 54 participants were available for analysis. There were statistically significant improvements in pre- versus post-training survey responses for 6 of the 10 survey questions. Qualitative survey responses revealed that video and case studies are effective means to teach awareness and cultural humility concepts. Conclusions. This project demonstrated that a self-study training module can be an effective method for producing statistically-significant improvements in measures of awareness and cultural humility. While increases in measures of awareness and cultural humility do not guarantee greater engagement and action, they are a critical first steps in providing culturally-sensitive patient care. Samples with greater variance in demographic variables are needed to more fully assess the efficacy of the training.