Sinclair Community College’s Rehabilitation Services Department hosted their first Culture Day in the stage area of Building 8 on Jan. 22, 2015.
Students who are enrolled in Sinclair’s physical therapist assistant and occupational therapy assistant programs gathered in small groups to meet with professionals in their respective fields.
The professionals who met with the Sinclair students were representative of cultures commonly found in this region’s rehabilitation services field. The purpose of the meeting was for students to learn about the different cultures they might encounter when working with patients. Students presented culture-related questions to the guest speakers and participated in discussions about the importance of the awareness of different cultures in the workplace.
Professor Debra Belcher, who helped coordinate Culture Day, recently spoke with The Clarion about the event.
“It was an idea that had been brewing in my mind for some time,” she said.
Belcher worked with OTA Director Heidi McGoham, OTA Field Coordinator Katie Tetrault, and PTA instructor Regina McCall to turn that idea into a reality this year.
Belcher holds a doctorate in physical therapy and is the Academic Coordinator of Clinical Education in Sinclair’s Rehabilitation Services Department. She has been teaching at Sinclair for 17 years. She said that it is very important for students in the PTA and OTA programs to learn about other cultures because of the nature of the relationship between health care service providers and patients.
“Being a health care professional means that you are going to be exposed to a variety of people … of different cultures [and] different belief systems. It is extremely important that our students understand different cultures so that they can be accepting and empathetic,” Belcher said. “You have to be sensitive to what’s appropriate to the people you’re providing the care to.”
Belcher said she believes it is important for any professional who works with the public to understand and be sensitive to different cultures, but it is especially important for people working in physical and occupational therapy.
“Those two professions—even more so than any other healthcare profession—from the moment we meet the patient, we’re touching them,” she said. “You can’t do that without trust, and you can’t develop trust without creating a rapport—which comes from understanding, accepting and being sensitive [to] every person that you deal with.”
To illustrate this idea, Belcher described a mock scenario that students took part in toward the end of the event.
The students were separated into groups, and each group was given a different hypothetical case-study in which differences in culture contributed to a less favorable outcome concerning the provider/patient relationship. The students were then tasked with reading the cases and trying to figure out what went wrong. After coming to a consensus about what the problem was, the next step was for the students to come up with ideas for what the PTAs and OTAs in the mock scenarios could have done differently to improve the relationship between the service provider and patient.
One of the scenarios involved a Muslim woman who was receiving home health therapy. The hypothetical therapist who came to visit her was a male who was uneducated about the Muslim faith.
“He attempted to touch her to see the affected part of her body, and she was not very receptive to that,” Belcher said. “Also, her husband was with her and [the therapist] was speaking to her and her husband was answering for her. The therapist was just not very educated [about] the Muslim culture and how he should have been addressing her and her husband.”
After the event, students completed a survey to give the organizers feedback about Culture Day, answering questions and offering comments about their reactions to the day’s activities.
The survey revealed that most of the students who attended said they felt like they had a better understanding of cultural issues after participating in Culture Day. Many students also said that they learned new facts and information related to culture. For some students, their favorite part of the day was talking with the guest speakers and learning about the different cultures.
Belcher agrees that student learning is one of the most enjoyable parts of the scholastic experience.
“The cool thing about teaching is you get to watch the students grow knowledge-wise from the beginning of the program to the end, she said.
Typically, instructors only teach an an individual student for one semester, but in the PTA program, Belcher sees her students through until the completion of their program, which allows her the opportunity to see them progress and develop in their chosen field.
“What keeps me coming back is seeing the outcome at the end,” she said. “I get to see them carrying out all the dreams that they have.”