Why Healthcare Organizations Can No Longer Treat the Two Separately.
For decades, healthcare organizations have worked to improve patient experience by focusing on communication, compassion, service excellence, and patient-centered care. At the same time, cultural competence in healthcare has often been addressed through a different lens—as part of diversity initiatives, workforce education, health equity programs, or regulatory requirements.
That separation no longer makes sense.
Every patient experiences healthcare through the context of who they are. Culture, language, beliefs, values, family traditions, previous experiences with healthcare, expectations, and personal preferences influence how patients understand illness, communicate with clinicians, make decisions, respond to treatment recommendations, and ultimately judge the care they receive. These factors are central to culturally competent care and the overall patient experience.
Cultural competence, therefore, is not an adjunct to patient experience. It is patient experience.
The Patient Brings More Than a Diagnosis
Healthcare professionals are trained to identify and treat disease. Yet the person experiencing that disease brings something to the clinical encounter that cannot be captured by a diagnosis, laboratory result, or medical history.
Patients bring their lived experiences.
Two patients with the same diagnosis may interpret that diagnosis very differently. One may expect the physician to make treatment decisions. Another may expect extensive discussion and shared decision-making. For another patient, family members may play an essential role in healthcare decisions.
Beliefs about illness, pain, death, mental health, medications, diet, physical contact, gender, spirituality and traditional healing practices can influence the healthcare encounter.
Culturally competent care does not require healthcare professionals to become experts in every culture. That would be impossible. It requires something more fundamental: the willingness and ability to recognize that our own assumptions are not necessarily the patient’s assumptions.
The question changes from “What do I know about this patient’s culture?” to “What do I need to understand about this person to provide the best possible care?”
Cultural Humility Changes the Conversation
This distinction is important.
Traditional approaches to cultural competence sometimes emphasized learning characteristics associated with particular populations. While awareness is valuable, it can unintentionally create another problem: stereotyping.
Knowing something about a culture does not mean knowing the individual sitting in front of us.
Cultural humility offers a different approach. It requires curiosity, self-reflection, and recognition that patients are experts in their own lives.
Instead of assuming, we ask.
What is important to you as we plan your care?
Is there anything about your beliefs or traditions that you would like us to understand?
Who would you like involved in decisions about your healthcare?
What concerns do you have about the treatment we are recommending?
These are simple questions, but they communicate something powerful: I see you. I respect you. Your perspective matters here.
That is the essence of patient-centered care—and a foundation for improving patient experience.
Communication Is More Than Language
Language differences provide one of the clearest examples of the connection between cultural competence and patient experience.
Interpretation services are essential when patients and clinicians do not share a language, but culturally competent communication and effective healthcare communication extend beyond translation.
A message can be translated accurately and still not be understood.
Health literacy, cultural beliefs, communication styles, family dynamics and previous experiences with healthcare can all affect how health information is received and understood.
The consequences can extend well beyond satisfaction. Miscommunication can affect informed consent, medication use, discharge instructions, follow-up care and adherence to treatment.
When patients do not understand what is happening to them, the issue is no longer simply communication. It becomes an issue of experience, quality and safety.
Trust May Be the Most Important Outcome
Healthcare depends upon trust.
Patients must trust clinicians enough to disclose information, ask questions, express concerns and participate in decisions. They must believe that recommendations are being made in their best interest.
Yet trust cannot be demanded because someone is wearing a white coat or carrying professional credentials. It is earned through interactions.
A patient who feels dismissed, misunderstood or judged may become less willing to communicate. A patient who believes that cultural or personal beliefs are being ignored may disengage from the care plan.
Conversely, when patients feel respected and understood, we create the conditions in which trust can develop.
This is why cultural competence belongs at the center of patient experience strategy and healthcare quality improvement.
Moving Cultural Competence From Training to Strategy
Many healthcare organizations address cultural competence primarily through annual cultural competence training. Education is important, but a culturally responsive organization and a strong patient-centered culture cannot be created through a training module alone.
Leadership must ask broader questions.
Do we understand the populations we serve?
Can patients communicate with us in ways they understand?
Do our policies accommodate important cultural and religious practices whenever clinically appropriate?
Do we involve patients and communities in designing services?
Are we examining patient-experience, quality and safety data to identify differences among the populations we serve?
Do our leaders and employees have the skills to recognize their own assumptions?
Are patients being asked what matters to them rather than having us decide what should matter to them?
These questions move cultural competence from an individual responsibility to an organizational capability—and make it part of a sustainable patient experience strategy.
Patient Experience Requires Us to See Healthcare Through Their Eyes
One of the most important principles of patient experience and patient-centered healthcare is also remarkably simple: healthcare is experienced from the patient’s perspective, not ours.
A technically excellent encounter can still be a poor experience if the patient does not understand what happened, does not feel respected, does not trust the people providing care, or believes that important values and preferences were ignored.
The goal cannot be to treat every patient exactly the same.
The goal must be to provide every patient with the same commitment to excellent care while recognizing that what respectful, understandable and patient-centered care looks like may differ from person to person.
That requires cultural awareness.
It requires humility.
It requires curiosity.
And it requires healthcare professionals and organizations to resist the temptation to assume that they already know what patients need.
As healthcare becomes increasingly diverse and interconnected, cultural competence cannot remain a separate initiative delegated to diversity programs or annual training requirements.
It must become part of how healthcare organizations define healthcare quality, patient safety, effective communication, healthcare leadership—and patient experience itself.
Because ultimately, culturally competent care begins with one of the most fundamental promises we can make to a patient:
Before we decide what excellent care should look like for you, we will first take the time to understand who you are.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024). Culture and language: Health literacy. https://www.cdc.gov/health-literacy/php/develop-materials/culture.html
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health. (2025). National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) in Health and Health Care. https://thinkculturalhealth.hhs.gov/clas/standards
Tervalon, M., & Murray-García, J. (1998). Cultural humility versus cultural competence: A critical distinction in defining physician training outcomes in multicultural education. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 9(2), 117–125.
Biedron, J., & PXAcademy. (2026). Culturally Competent Patient Experience Professional (CCPXP) program materials. PXAcademy.
