Institute:Office of National Coordinator (ONC) Workforce Training Curriculum
Component:The Culture of Health Care
Unit:An Overview of the Culture of Health Care
Lecture:Learning more about the culture of health care
Slide content:Challenges to Cultural Competence for Medical Students Resistance I didnt come to medical school to learn this we have more important things to worry about Ethnocentrism or denial of own culture/bias Stereotyping and oversimplifying Culture not monolithic but is relative, plural, partial Othering Group defined as different from norm group labeled, marginalized, excluded 10
Slide notes:At times there may be resistance to the idea of achieving or studying cultural competence, whether were talking about health professionals learning cultural competence for their interactions with patients, or about health informatics [in- fer -mat- iks ] professionals learning cultural competence for their interactions within the health care system. When medical students encounter the cultural competence curriculum, we sometimes encounter this resistance expressed in a statement, such as I didnt come to medical school to learn this and we have more important things to worry about. This resistance also comes from a certain degree of ethnocentrism or denial of ones own culture or cultural bias. It also comes from stereotyping and oversimplifying the cultures of others, failing to recall that culture is not monolithic but relative, plural, and partial, as discussed earlier. Finally, it comes from othering, that is, treating persons in another group thats different from ones own group, which is taken to be normal, and then labeling, marginalizing, or excluding those in the other culture. In health care we sometimes encounter these forms of resistance. 10