Cultural competency has gained traction as the center of competitive advantage and customer satisfaction in therapy and among speech-language pathologists. A typical challenge with cultural competency entails stereotypes: expectations of professional therapists due to the effects of their orientation of race, nationality, region, or gender. Speech-language pathologists are tempted into stereotyping due to exaggerating the differences among cultural groups of either colleagues or clients, which distract therapeutic sessions.
Therapists’ behaviors affect inter-professional therapeutic relationships. The knowledge of Speech-Language Pathologists is of vital importance in our worldwide counseling practices. If therapists study how inter-professional differences influence their relationships with others, they may enjoy the benefits of a multicultural workplace or community, which offers excellent creative and professional potential. Culture in therapy promotes interpersonal relationships for an organization.
Poor inter-professional perceptions lead to stereotypes which are communication barriers. Humans use stereotypes to simplify and make predictions about the discourse they come across each day. Every therapist, to some extent, uses stereotypes to help them make sense of a complex and uncertain environment. Thus, they should learn about stereotypes in the context of cultural studies.
When coping with issues of cultural incompetence and inter-professional differences in therapeutic practices, one should consider developing strategies of prototyping rather than stereotyping. Health care personnel should never despise other people who ascribe to cultural orientations different from theirs. Cultural prejudice should be avoided completely. A primarily cultural stereotype precedes cultural competencies. Cultural incompetence destroys the relationship between people of different cultural heeds. Stereotyping is common among Speech Language Pathologists, which distracts people from perceiving the therapy sessions negatively.
Speech Language Pathologists should initiate strategies for reducing complex situations that lead to cultural shock. In promoting both cultural competency and inter-professional practice in the health care industry, professional bodies should incorporate competency as part of the qualification criteria. Speech Language Pathologists should go for extra training on coping with culture-related shocks in and outside the medical health industry.
The first step in adopting competency is gaining self-awareness of stereotypes. Speech Language Pathologists should also expose themselves to other cultural and inter-professional diversities to understand other people’s cultures and values and thus avoid frequent cultural shocks. Cultural and inter-professional diversities will always exist and are appreciated since it promotes inclusion and improved service delivery. Therefore, Speech Language Pathologists only perceive things as unique due to their comparisons of what they consider civilizations.
To avoid cultural incompetence, Speech Language Pathologists should understand their biases and meaningless assumptions toward others. Self-insight into cultural issues should be encouraged before critiquing other people’s cultures. SLPs should seek to identify the origins and developments of their negative preconceptions. Knowledge about other people’s cultures is paramount as it helps to discover and appreciate what is good in different cultures. Self-awareness of the cultural lenses helps to discover their strengths and weaknesses in a multicultural setting.