DC PHYSICIAN
CREATES AN ENVIRONMENT OF TRUST FOR HIS PATIENTS
Kyu Rhee, M.D., an NHSC clinician and associate
medical director with Unity Health Care, Inc., Upper
Cardozo Clinic, in Washington, DC, cares for a diverse
patient population—from Spanish-speaking persons
to Asians, Ethiopians, and individuals who are homeless—in
a busy urban setting. “Cultural brokering is not
a recipe approach,” he says, rather, it is the
process where listening is the essential component, one
that cuts across all cultures. By carefully listening
to his patients, Rhee says, he benefits by understanding
his patients holistically, and thus is able to better
treat their health care problems. This benefit became
starkly evident when he saw a woman from Zimbabwe who
had suffered from headaches for 4 years and from back
and chest pain for months. After talking with her, Rhee
discovered she had been a rape victim, had witnessed
death as a child in her war-torn country, had left her
native home, and had just been divorced. Hearing these
tragedies of life is an entrée into people’s
lives, he says, that can benefit the provider by helping
him or her to recognize cultural factors affecting patients’ health
and behaviors. Dr. Rhee, in his role as associate medical
director, is able to use the information he elicits from
patients to enhance and improve care. Additionally, as
a cultural broker, he is able to use this knowledge as
a vehicle to support other providers through mentoring
and inservice training. |
 Benefits to the NHSC
Most of the health care settings that sponsor NHSC scholars and clinicians
in service are ideal locations for housing cultural broker programs.
These settings include, but are not limited to, rural clinics; health
departments that provide comprehensive primary care; hospital-based
programs that have ambulatory care; such specialty programs as mobile
clinics, homeless shelters, school-based health programs, and HIV/AIDS
clinics; community mental health programs; academic programs that
have a primary care community-based system of services; tribal and
migrant health programs; and those health care settings in U.S. territories.
A cultural broker program in these health care settings can:
- assess
the values, beliefs, and practices related to health
in the community being served;
- enhance
communication between patients/consumers and other
providers;
- advocate
for the use of culturally and linguistically competent
practices in the delivery of services; and
- assist
with efforts to increase access to care and eliminate
racial and ethnic disparities in health.
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