This section adds a new section to an existing chapter 43.70. Here is the modified chapter for context.
By January 1, 2023, the rule-making authority for each health profession licensed under Title 18 RCW subject to continuing education requirements must adopt rules requiring a licensee to complete health equity continuing education training at least once every four years using standards and criteria based on available research and evidence. A rule-making authority shall consult with patients or communities with lived experiences of health inequities or racism in the health care system, relevant professional organizations, and the department in the development of these rules.
Health equity continuing education courses may be taken in addition to or, if a rule-making authority determines the course fulfills existing continuing education requirements, in place of other continuing education requirements imposed by the rule-making authority.
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The secretary and the rule-making authorities must work collaboratively to provide information to licensees about available courses. The secretary and rule-making authorities shall consult with patients or communities with lived experiences of health inequities or racism in the health care system and relevant professional organizations when developing the information and must make this information available by July 1, 2022. It is not required that courses be included in the information in order to fulfill the health equity continuing education requirement.
The continuing education courses must teach attitudes, knowledge, and skills that enable a health care professional to care effectively for patients from diverse cultures, groups, and communities, varying in race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexuality, religion, age, ability, and socioeconomic status. Course topics may include, but are not limited to:
Strategies for recognizing patterns of health care disparities on an individual, institutional, and structural level and eliminating factors that influence them;
Intercultural communication skills training, including how to work effectively with an interpreter and how communication styles differ across cultures;
Implicit bias training to identify strategies to reduce bias during assessment and diagnosis;
Methods for addressing the emotional well-being of children and youth of diverse backgrounds;
Ensuring equity and antiracism in care delivery pertaining to medical developments and emerging therapies;
(A) Recognizing the structures that shape clinical interactions;
(B) Developing an extraclinical language of structure;
(C) Rearticulating "cultural" formulations in structural terms;
(D) Observing and imagining structural interventions; and
(E) Developing structural humility; and
vii. Cultural safety training.
The rule-making authority may adopt rules to implement and administer this section, including rules to establish a process to determine if a continuing education course meets the health equity continuing education requirement established in this section.
For purposes of this section the following definitions apply:
"Rule-making authority" means the regulatory entities identified in RCW 18.130.040 and authorized to establish continuing education requirements for the health care professions governed by those regulatory entities.
"Structural competency" means a shift in medical education away from pedagogic approaches to stigma and inequalities that emphasize cross-cultural understandings of individual patients, toward attention to forces that influence health outcomes at levels above individual interactions. Structural competency reviews existing structural approaches to stigma and health inequities developed outside of medicine and proposes changes to United States medical education that will infuse clinical training with a structural focus.
"Cultural safety" means an examination by health care professionals of themselves and the potential impact of their own culture on clinical interactions and health care service delivery. This requires individual health care professionals and health care organizations to acknowledge and address their own biases, attitudes, assumptions, stereotypes, prejudices, structures, and characteristics that may affect the quality of care provided. In doing so, cultural safety encompasses a critical consciousness where health care professionals and health care organizations engage in ongoing self-reflection and self-awareness and hold themselves accountable for providing culturally safe care, as defined by the patient and their communities, and as measured through progress towards achieving health equity. Cultural safety requires health care professionals and their associated health care organizations to influence health care to reduce bias and achieve equity within the workforce and working environment.
This section modifies existing section 43.70.615. Here is the modified chapter for context.
For the purposes of this section, "multicultural health" means the provision of health care services with the knowledge and awareness of the causes and effects of the determinants of health that lead to disparities in health status between different genders and racial and ethnic populations and the practice skills necessary to respond appropriately.
The department, in consultation with the disciplining authorities as defined in RCW 18.130.040, shall establish, within available department general funds, an ongoing multicultural health awareness and education program as an integral part of its health professions regulation. The purpose of the education program is to raise awareness and educate health care professionals regarding the knowledge, attitudes, and practice skills necessary to care for diverse populations to achieve a greater understanding of the relationship between culture and health. Any such education shall be developed in collaboration with education programs that train students in that health profession. No funds from the health professions account may be utilized to fund activities under this section unless the disciplining authority authorizes expenditures from its proportions of the account.
By July 1, 2008, each education program with a curriculum to train health professionals for employment in a profession credentialed by a disciplining authority under chapter 18.130 RCW shall integrate into the curriculum instruction in multicultural health as part of its basic education preparation curriculum. The department may not deny the application of any applicant for a credential to practice a health profession on the basis that the education or training program that the applicant successfully completed did not include integrated multicultural health curriculum as part of its basic instruction.