Advancing Patient Health with Authentic and Trusting Relationships: The Importance of Cultural Humility for Dentistry

For the past decade, oral health has centered cultural competency as an intended best practice. While the concept of cultural competency suggests that one can understand and appreciate cultural differences, it has an unintended consequence of promoting stereotypes, oversimplifying cultures, and creates an illusion of cultural understanding without intentional practices and actions. Cultural humility has emerged over the decades as a different concept for supporting inclusive practices with diverse individuals and communities. Cultural humility invites an acknowledgment of power dynamics for building authentic and trusting relationships. Moreover, cultural humility supports a lifelong learning and self-reflection with the goal not of demonstrating competency but supporting a curiosity for learning and growing where there are endless possibilities for strengthening interpersonal skills, developing empathy, and supporting a depth of understanding for inclusive practices. This course invites the learner to try-on this new concept of cultural humility and to explore best practices centering the patient (and community) in clinical practice and applying inclusive language into one’s clinical and professional practice. To support optimal learning for this session, attendees are encouraged to attend open to naming their blindspots as it relates to diverse populations (we have them), practicing understanding with curiosity, and ready to take action for their personal and personal growth. Presented in partnership with Crest+Oral-B, CDA and the CDA Foundation.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Identify strategies to leverage inclusion to advance patient health in clinical practice
• Compare the concepts of “cultural competency” and “cultural humility”
• Understand how “cultural humility” builds authentic and trusting relationships