Cultural Competency: Polishing Your Cultural Lens – A Fresh Perspective for Dental Professionals

This interactive webinar is designed to equip dental health professionals with essential cultural awareness skills for enhancing patient care across diverse populations. Participants explore how cultural backgrounds influence oral health beliefs, practices, and communication preferences while learning practical strategies to create a more inclusive clinical environment. Through a review of case studies, dental professionals will learn to identify unconscious biases that may impact clinician-patient interactions, treatment recommendations, and overall patient management. This course examines cultural considerations in treatment planning, pain management approaches, and preventive care recommendations that respect diverse patient values. By polishing your cultural lens, you will develop actionable skills to build stronger patient relationships, improve treatment adherence, and deliver more effective, personalized dental care in our increasingly multicultural patient population landscape.

Course Objectives: 

• Define cultural competency vs humility and explain its key principles and relevance in improving dental care outcomes and patient satisfaction.
• Recognize the diversity of dental patients’ cultural backgrounds, including common practices and beliefs that impact dental care and contribute to health disparities.
• Discuss effective cross-cultural communication strategies for overcoming language barriers, improving patient rapport, and recognizing variations in non-verbal communication.
• Identify personal and implicit biases that affect clinical decision-making and patient care and implement strategies to reduce and manage these biases in dental practice.
• Discuss how to create a culturally inclusive environment by incorporating practical cultural awareness strategies into everyday practice while adhering to related legal and ethical considerations.

Speaker: Isis Marsh, RDH, MS
Isis brings over 25 years of clinical experience as a dental hygienist and educator. With specialized expertise in pediatric, periodontal, and cosmetic dentistry, she has dedicated her career to raising awareness and advancing oral health education. Marsh is a published author in Dimensions of Dental Hygiene and Inside Dental Hygiene, and her interests include the oral-systemic link, health communication, and fostering student learning through effective teaching strategies in higher education. She is passionate about mentoring the next generation of dental professionals and upholding educational and ethical hygiene standards while providing evidence-based care to the public.