Identify five ways a support worker can convey acceptance of the client.

According to the textbook “Mosby's Canadian Textbook for the Support Worker” (Sorrentino, Remmert & Wilk, 2018), everyone has a culture. In other words, each client has language, values, beliefs, and behaviour that reflect their culture. As support workers, we usually communicate with clients having different cultures. Therefore, we must have some ways to avoid judgmental reactions. We suggest five ways following to express the acceptance of the client. The first is treating others equally. Even though clients are so different regardless of gender, race, status, age, or beliefs, support workers must respect their dissimilar characteristics. This means that when a person comes seeking medical help in a health facility, this client can receive the care by considering DIPPS even how bad or good they are. For example, the client is a well-known criminal. The care given to this person is the same given to other clients who are outstanding citizens. There is no prejudice or special treatment from the health care providers. The second way is active listening. When caring for patients from different cultures, it is best to listen, acknowledge, validate, and support. By doing so, the client will feel important, as if they are being heard and treated fairly. We must consider how their beliefs and values may affect their ability to understand and participate in their medical care. We can show that we care and is interested in what they tell us by body language such as making eye contact or leaning toward them. Moreover, sometimes we can ask some questions related to their beliefs so that we can understand how the culture impacts their health care. The next attitude is keeping a straight face. In other words, support workers show none of the feelings on their faces. In the textbook (Sorrentino, Remmert & Wilk, 2018), the authors say that facial expressions are diverse. Indeed, we sometimes cannot control our attitude because this is one of our first reactions. However, a poker face interprets our caring without judgment. For instance, if a client talks to us about their culture, but there are some points that we do not agree even be uncomfortable. We should not show our negative emotions, such as contempt or anger. It is important to have a non-emotional face expressing our respect for the information received. The other method is being respectful of clients’ beliefs and culture. Although they have different or contrasting cultures than ours, we must accept and respect them. Based on the concept of DIPPS, we do not give any comments regarding their behavior. We may judge their thoughts, even force them to follow what we think is right. Therefore, we should stay away from stereotypes or discrimination. For example, Muslim women always wear a garment, called a hijab, to cover the head. Health care providers should talk to them and find out the solution if observing their head is one of the medical treatment requirements instead of forcing them to remove it. The last one is improving cultural knowledge. The textbook (Sorrentino, Remmert & Wilk, 2018) also mentions that learning as much as possible from communication. That means, when having a conversation with clients, we can increase our awareness by giving questions by avoiding communication barriers. Especially, we must pay attention to the use of verbal and non-verbal communication techniques. How to touch clients, and how to have the right eye contact, there are many different meanings. Consequently, we can discover their culture by looking for information on the Internet or asking for other coworkers coming from the same culture. Briefly, as support workers, we need to treat clients justly despite they are all different. As a result, they trust us, and we can provide effective and safe care to them.