Cultural Competency Training: A Literature Review of its Effects on Healthcare

Implicit bias and discrimination in health care is found to be a contributing factor to health disparities. As the field of health care becomes more socially aware and adopt socially justice ideologies, efforts to reduce bias and prejudice are often demonstrated as cultural competency trainings and workshops for health care professionals and students. However, there is little to no evidence that shows if this approach is effective. A literature review was conducted to determine a) if cultural competency training among students increase their ability to provide high quality care to underserved individuals, b), what makes a training effective, and c), how curriculum designers and facilitators can improve their effectiveness. The review concluded that there is insufficient rigorous evidence that supports cultural competency trainings' ability to modify implicit bias in healthcare professionals. The findings imply that more comprehensive work must be done in health care to reduce health disparities.