Elijah Levy, Ph.D.
Educator, Author, Trainer and Consultant to Health Care and Mental Health Organizations
Your vision reveals the distance you must cover
I provide consultation to organizations interested in launching their business initiatives to
improve organizational performance and operate optimally through genuine,
desired and enduring change.
I have been teaching in the undergraduate and graduate school of business at University of Redlands the last 30 years. My doctorate degree in clinical psychology enabled me to function as a clinical and program director in inpatient psychiatric programs where I developed my leadership and managerial skills. I understand organizational behavior, employee motivation and how to create work environments that pull for the best in employees. Together we can improve organizational performance through systematic analysis of existing organizational processes and developing specific plans for improvement. The multidisciplinary nature of organizational behavior reflects employee attitudes, values, capabilities and learning capacities.
Unless you act on your ideas to maximize organizational performance, your employees and organization will continue to operate at the just good enough level and the gap between current and optimal performance will widen
For your organization to function optimally, management is tasked with creating outstanding work teams and departments that can effectively respond to your customer's varied needs in domestic and global markets. Managers must be skilled at coordinating work efforts through designing structures that sustain stable relationships and processes.
In addition, I offer training to health care/mental health care organizations invested in training their health care providers to become culturally and linguistically competent providers. Since health care providers are at higher risk for developing compassion fatigue, I conduct self-care training to engender self-awareness in health care providers to establish and maintain healthy, wellness lifestyles.
For a no fee consultation, please email or
call me at (562) 230-3334
Testimonials
Is Your Organization Operating at the "Just Good Enough" Level
Health Care Organizations: Train Your Employees to Become Culturally and Linguistically Competent Health Care Providers
Dr. Levy is a deeply thoughtful, caring individual who encourages and inspires all who come in contact with him to pursue their aspirations with conviction and courage. He emphasizes high ethical standards, critical thinking, and respect for diversity. His concern for the needs and well-being of others is rare and genuine. I am and will always be extremely grateful for the support and guidance he has provided me.
Dan
I had the good fortune of meeting Elijah when I applied for an adjunct teaching position at the University of Redlands. The university assigned him conduct my in-person interview and teaching demonstration. I had limited teaching experience at the time and, were it not for Elijah's calming, encouraging demeanor, I might not have performed well and, as a result, may have decided teaching was not for me. He was (and is) a model of intellectual vigor tempered with authentic humility and empathy that I took with me when engaging with my students in the years to come. I am deeply thankful to have met him at that critical stage in my personal and professional journey and know that the impact I have had the opportunity to make in the lives of my students is in part due to his influence on me.
Jeremy
Courses/Training
Teambuilding: You, Me & Them Becomes an Awesome Us
Becoming a Culturally Competent Health Care Provider
Why Self-Care Matters
Life Coaching
Developing Outstanding Managerial Skills
I design and deliver training programs to improve an organization’s capacity to offer culturally responsive health care services. However, before a health care system can deliver culturally competent health care, we must identify if any systemic, institutionalized bias is reducing the quality of health care. Otherwise, health care organizations will continue to operate with institutionalized, structural and systemic bias leading to health care disparities, patient dissatisfaction and less than optimal outcomes for patients.
America is experiencing increasing diversity which is challenging our health care delivery system to create culturally proficient services that meet the social and cultural needs of patients. Health care organizations are realizing that unless their providers are trained to deliver culturally and linguistically proficient services with the highest quality of care, health disparities will continue to negatively influence the care patients receive.
How Health Care Organizations Can Reduce Health Care Disparities
Health care organizations that integrate cultural competency into their training programs reduce disparities in health care and are more respected and trusted in delivering inclusive and effective health care. Training in how to deliver culturally proficient care must become an organizational priority to attain optimal institutional efficiency, to reduce cost and remove barriers interfering with access to treatment. Otherwise, health care organizations will continue to operate with structural and systemic bias leading to health care disparities, patient dissatisfaction and decreased optimal well-being and outcomes for patients.
It is imperative health care professionals become culturally and linguistically competent so they can enhance patient engagement and care for patients across a wide range of cultural needs. In addition, culturally competent health care systems recognize the importance of assessing patients using an integrated, biopsychosocial model that appreciates the influence of a patient’s biological, spiritual, cultural/social needs and race. These factors influence how patients experience their illness and relationship with their health care provider.
Length of Training: Three (3) Hours
Learning Objectives:
-
Define culture, cultural humility, cultural sensitivity and cultural competence
-
Appreciate the benefits of respectful communication; how providing responsive, culturally proficient care increases therapeutic alliance with patients
-
Understand that quality health care can only occur within the patient’s cultural context.
-
Understand how ignoring diversity and culturally incongruent health care can adversely affect patient outcomes, compromise patient safety and result in patient dissatisfaction.
-
Learn how to eliminate misunderstandings in diagnosis and treatment planning that may result from differences in language or culture, how culture shapes appraisal of emotions.
-
Identify how your counterproductive assumptions/ implicit biases can negatively impact patient care.
-
Is your health care organization providing culturally competent and responsive services that translates to patients feeling like they matter?
-
Are your patients engaged with their health care provider and are they receiving care embedded in their cultural and ethnic context; where they feel understood and experience you as worthy of their respect, confidence and trust?
-
Is your health care organization operating with systemic bias toward minorities, people of color or underserved populations resulting in patients receiving less than optimal care which contributes to health disparities and patient dissatisfaction?
For quality health care to be provided, it must emerge within the patient’s cultural, social and linguistic context. In addition, health care providers may be unaware of how their implicit biases influence the interactions and perceptions of their patients across a wide spectrum of race, ethnicity, gender and social class. Health care providers will reduce misunderstandings in diagnosis and treatment if they commit themselves to generating insight into how their implicit biases can influence their perceptions of their patients from underserved, minority backgrounds. A culturally and linguistically competent health care provider will engender a therapeutic alliance to increase patient satisfaction. The competent health care provider understands how their patient’s culture influences their health care beliefs, practices toward care and how to create trust in their provider’s care. The objective is for the provider to possess cultural humility and cultural competence. A culturally proficient health care provider understands how the etiology of disease states/illnesses vary from culture to culture, how illness is perceived across cultures and their patient’s expectations.
Understanding the Influence of Implicit Bias and Eliminating It
How to Become a Culturally and Linguistically
Competent Health Care Provider
