Evaluating the effect of cultural competency training on medical student attitudes.
OBJECTIVE
Developing skills for taking care of patients from a wide variety of backgrounds is a growing area of importance in medical education. Incorporating cultural competency training into undergraduate medical education is an accreditation requirement. Although there are an increasing number of such curricula reported in the literature, there has been little evaluation of their effectiveness. We describe a new undergraduate cultural competency curriculum, the reliability of an instrument for assessing student attitudes in this area, and the effects of our curriculum on student attitudes.


METHODS
Two introductory clinical medicine courses focused on the importance of providing culturally competent care to all patients. The courses used problem-based learning and a history-taking mnemonic to teach students to assess patients' perspectives. The authors verified the reliability of the Health Beliefs Attitudes Survey (HBAS) and used it to determine changes in students' attitudes on issues relating to cultural competency.


RESULTS
The HBAS reliably measured four cultural competency concepts. Student attitudes regarding the importance of assessing patient opinions and determining health beliefs improved significantly following the courses.


CONCLUSIONS
The method used here to teach students cultural competency skills early in medical school positively affects student attitudes on cultural competency issues.
Department of Family Medicine, UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School, Newark, 07107, USA. jesse.crosson@umdnj.edu
Jesse C
JC
Crosson
Weiling
W
Deng
Chantal
C
Brazeau
Linda
L
Boyd
Maria
M
Soto-Greene
D000328:Adult; D001290:Attitude; D003162:Competency-Based Education / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D003479:Curriculum / Q000592:standards; D003625:Data Collection; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*