Cultural Competence in OT

So today, my boyfriend and I were having one of our various political discussion/argument and he says to me, "You're just a liberal in a hardworker's body". It brought me back to our class discussion we had on May 4 about cultural competence, stereotypes, racism etc. By saying that to me he was pointing to the conclusion that all liberal's are actually lazy, a stereotype made by many people on the conservative side of things. I like to think that I am the type of person that sees the bigger picture and just sees everyone as unique, equally important human beings. Brandan however, has been in and out of the army and has a more straight forward perspective to life and if life strays anywhere off the path of "norm" its a little more difficult for him to accept that.
As occupational therapist I feel like we are taught from the beginning that nothing in life is "normal" and we find the beauty in that. We are given the opportunity to see everyone from a holistic perspective and see how something like religion, or race can affect their occupations. This gives OT's the chance to find a unique way to solve a problem and help the person who needs help no matter if they are white, black, christian, muslim, male, female, gay, or straight.

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