Building Cultural and Linguistic Competence ■ 11
■ Cultural Competence Cultural competence implies that professional health care must be developed to be culturally sensitive, culturally appropriate, and culturally competent. Cultur- ally competent care is critical to meet the complex culture-bound health care needs of a given person, family, and community. It is the provision of health care across cultural boundaries and takes into account the context in which the pa- tient lives, as well as the situations in which the patient’s health problems arise.