Cultural competency in physiotherapy: a model for training

As the National Health Service and the physiotherapy profession address the need for culturally competent services in multicultural Britain, there is a clear need for training programmes for postgraduate physiotherapists. One service serving a diverse community in inner London modified a contemporary model for the development of cultural competence to provide an in-house training programme. The emphasis of the programme was on enabling staff to explore their own values, beliefs and ideas, and examine their therapeutic relationships with clients. It achieved this by encouraging participants to examine personal and professional ethnocentricity as well as organisational factors influencing care. Participants were able to articulate concerns about limitations in knowledge or confidence that may contribute to culturally insensitive care, and to generate new ways of tackling issues that had been raised. It is anticipated that the legacy of this training will encourage health professionals who participated to continue to question and learn through the experience. It is hoped that the authors’ reflections on the design and delivery of a training programme for frontline practitioners will assist other physiotherapy services in developing their own initiatives around culturally competent practice.