Linguistic and Cultural Competence at Hospital Discharge

Race, Ethnicity, And Culture: An Overview

Recognizing the multifaceted impact of linguistic and cultural diversity in hospital discharge first requires an exploration the link between race, ethnicity, and culture (Egede, 2006; Flanagin et al., 2021). Race and ethnicity, while often used interchangeably, represent distinct but interconnected social constructs. Race is commonly understood as a categorization of individuals based on physical characteristics, such as skin color, while ethnicity refers to shared cultural heritage, ancestry, and nationality. Culture encompasses a broad range of shared values, beliefs, traditions, practices, and behaviors of a particular group, which may be reflected by language, religion, social norms, or dietary preferences. Because individual cultures are difficult to define and track on a population level, race, ethnicity, and preferred language are often used as proxies for cultural groups. These discrete labels, however, clearly oversimplify one’s identity; some have advocated to instead focus on the concept of intersectionality to understand disparities in health care that arise from the combined force of inequalities (Wilson et al., 2019).