01/27/2006 - 01/28/2006

Cultural Competency Training for Health Care

Healthcare practitioners need training in cultural competency to better meet the needs of today's diverse patient population, according to Howard Ross, president of Cook Ross, Inc., one of the country's leading diversity training and consulting companies.

Cook Ross diversity consultants spoke and exhibited at the National Leadership Summit on Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Minority Health, Jan. 9-11 in Washington, DC.

Amri Johnson, Cook Ross executive vice president, and Tara Nelson, vice president of Research and Development, presented on "Cultural Competency: A Comprehensive Approach," as part of a workshop on video and Web-based trainings for culturally competent care. They also presented on "Cultural Competency: From Concept to Action: A Practical Approach to Healthcare Organizations."

"Cultural competency has become a critical focus in healthcare," Ross said. "The changing demographics in our society have created increasing challenges in understanding how culture, race, religion and ethnicity impact patient care and treatment protocols. Cook Ross's CultureVision brings cultural competency right to the healthcare provider."

conference: recruiting diversity

The importance of recruiting diversity in the workplace will be highlighted at a unique national diversity event taking place on 8-9 March 2006 and hosted by the Centre for Economic & Social Inclusion, in partnership with Talent Recruitment.

For companies committed to addressing diversity issues in the modern workplace, the event is not to be missed. Speakers from a number of blue chips and media groups will be offering their own insights into recruiting diversity, including Barkers, B&Q, BskyB, BT, Transport for London, Ford, Herbert Smith LLP, ITV, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, The Independent, UBS and Yorkshire Water.

expats win right to make dismissal claims

The employment rights of thousands of people working overseas were strengthened yesterday when the highest court ruled that, in many circumstances, they should be able to bring unfair dismissal claims in the UK.

The legal rights of thousands of 'peripateti'" employees, such as airline pilots or expatriate workers who are posted overseas for extended periods had recently become a grey area of employment law.

expat kids suffer from a lack of preparation

New year... new country. But when parents decide to move overseas, how many seriously consider the impact on their children? About half of all those who set off abroad, vowing never to come back, end up doing precisely that. This is the sobering warning for would-be expats, from the Office of National Statistics. And one of the most common reasons is that children are unhappy and fail to settle down.

The truth is that you may very well dream of escaping to the sun, but your children probably won't feel the same way. In fact, if not exactly dragged off kicking and screaming, youngsters are often taken away with little or no preparation for their new lives in the form of language training or expat relocation training for kids.

the impact of language & culture on health and safety

Following safety and health rules is a challenge for any worker. There’s a lot to learn and remember about federal standards, company policies and task-specific protocols. Imagine how much harder all this must be for those who know little or no English in a workplace where almost no one speaks their language.

What are the safety-related challenges that arise from language and culture differences? Why has the issue taken on greater importance than in the past? And, what are some organizations and employers doing to identify and solve the problems? Those are among questions asked and answered in this compliance report from TrainingOnline.com.

pupils turning their backs on foreign languages

Pupils in the city turning their back on studying foreign languages in their droves. Now Birmingham education authority is set to receive a £315,000 cash boost from April to help tackle the problem, with most of the cash going direct to primary schools.

The decline in languages at school comes after the requirement to teach them was removed from the National Curriculum with effect from September 2004.

sdl announces new applications

SDL International, a provider of global information management (GIM) solutions, announced the latest releases of its enterprise GIM applications, SDL Translation Management System 2006 and SDL TeamWorks 2006. Delivering on SDL’s roadmap, the open platform capabilities and customer-driven innovations offer customers even greater flexibility to orchestrate their global content supply chains.

gates supports google's decision

Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft, took the rare step of standing up for arch-rival Google today as he argued that state censorship was no reason for technology companies not to do business in China.

The richest man in the world told delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos that he thought the internet "is contributing to Chinese political engagement" as "access to the outside world is preventing more censorship". All three of largest internet companies - Google, Microsoft and Yahoo - have been fiercely criticised by human rights groups for toeing China's line on restrictions of free speech.

met commissioner accuses media of racism

The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, yesterday accused the media of institutional racism, hitting out at newspapers for regularly relegating the murders of people from ethnic minorities to "a paragraph on page 97".

In a prolonged attack on the media's news values, he said the press was guilty of devoting more column inches to the death of white, middle-class victims than those from ethnic minorities.

"We do devote the same level of resources to murders in relation to their difficulty," said Sir Ian, speaking at a monthly meeting of the Metropolitan police authority. "What the difference is, is how these are reported. I actually believe the media is guilty of institutional racism in the way they report deaths."

word of the day: wunderkind

wunderkind \VOON-duhr-kint\, noun;
1. A child prodigy.
2. One who achieves great success or acclaim at an early age.

It was even written that, at 20, his best days were behind him. He had gone from a wunderkind to an object of sympathy, a hero struggling not to be forgotten. -- "Owen shines like a beacon amid the wrecks," Times (London), May 29, 2000

In the mid-thirties, he became the youngest and best state director of FDR's National Youth Administration, a Texas wunderkind who at age twenty-eight beat several better known opponents for a south-central Texas congressional seat. -- Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant