Best health outcomes for Maori - Medical Council of New Zealand

Cultural competence
and clinical competence
Familiarity with patients’ cultural heritage has been shown to
be associated with improved patient care, 18 thus rendering
cultural competence “essential for high quality healthcare”. 38
As a result, these aspects are now recognised as needing
to be included in continuing education for healthcare
professionals. The HPCAA requires all registration
bodies, including the Council, to establish standards of
clinical and cultural competence. In a series of articles in
2004, St George described how to establish and assess
standards of competence in the healthcare setting, 39-44 and
many of these ideas are being incorporated into current
recertification requirements. Branch advisory bodies such as
the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine (AFPHM)
and the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners
(RNZCGP) have begun to address the need for assessments
of cultural competence alongside assessments of clinical
competence within their recertification requirements.
Best health outcomes for Mäori: Practice implications