Dental students' attitudes toward treating diverse patients: effects of a cross-cultural patient-instructor program.
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This article describes the effects of a cross-cultural patient-instructor (PI) program on dental students' attitudes toward diversity. PIs were individuals from the community trained to portray specific simulated patients who presented cross-cultural challenges to students. Dental students interviewed PIs during two rotations, one in their junior and one in their senior year. Using a retrospective pretest-posttest design, after completing each rotation, students reported their likelihood of engaging in certain desirable diversity thoughts and actions before versus after each PI rotation. Seventy-three students completed the first cross-cultural rotation, and eighty-two students completed the second. Each rotation improved students' diversity-related attitudes. The first rotation, in their junior year, had slightly greater effect on these outcomes than the second rotation, in their senior year. Students also reported very positive evaluations of the course. These findings suggest that students' attitudes toward diversity can be modified. PIs are a creative way to promote cross-cultural patient care with health professions students, making them more open to thinking about, discussing, and engaging in patient-oriented, diversity-related activities. (+info)
Patient-based cultural competency curriculum for pre-health professionals.
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BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The diverse US population requires medical cultural competency education for health providers throughout their pre-professional and professional years. We present a curriculum to train pre-health professional undergraduates by combining classroom education in the humanities and cross-cultural communication skills with volunteer clinical experiences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) hospital. METHODS: The course was open to a maximum of 15 UCLA junior and senior undergraduate students with a pre-health or humanities major and was held in the spring quarters of 2002--2004. The change in students' knowledge of cultural competency was evaluated using the Provider's Guide to Quality and Culture Quiz (QCQ) and through students' written assignments and evaluations. RESULTS: Trainees displayed a statistically significant improvement in scores on the QCQ. Participants' written assignments and subjective evaluations confirmed an improvement in awareness and a high motivation to continue learning at the graduate level. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first evaluated undergraduate curriculum that integrates interdisciplinary cultural competency training with patient volunteering in the medical field. The didactic, volunteering, and writing components of the course comprise a broadly applicable tool for training future health care providers at other institutions. (+info)
What Latina patients don't tell their doctors: a qualitative study.
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Patient centeredness, cultural competence and healthcare quality.
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Cultural competence and patient centeredness are approaches to improving healthcare quality that have been promoted extensively in recent years. In this paper, we explore the historical evolution of both cultural competence and patient centeredness. In doing so, we demonstrate that early conceptual models of cultural competence and patient centeredness focused on how healthcare providers and patients might interact at the interpersonal level and that later conceptual models were expanded to consider how patients might be treated by the healthcare system as a whole. We then compare conceptual models for both cultural competence and patient centeredness at both the interpersonal and healthcare system levels to demonstrate similarities and differences. We conclude that, although the concepts have had different histories and foci, many of the core features of cultural competence and patient centeredness are the same. Each approach holds promise for improving the quality of healthcare for individual patients, communities and populations. (+info)
Reforming dental education: faculty members' perceptions on the continuation of pipeline program changes.
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In 2002-03 the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) established the Pipeline, Profession, and Practice: Community-Based Dental Education program to change dental education in the United States. In partnership with The California Endowment, the RWJF awarded grants to fifteen U.S. dental schools that would support them in efforts to recruit more underrepresented minority/low-income (URM/LI) students, add cultural competence training, and increase extramural rotations to sixty days. As the program evaluator, the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Public Health (UCLA-SPH) conducted a survey of dental faculty in 2006 related to the goals of the Pipeline program. In this article, we report faculty perceptions pertaining to the extramural rotations and URM/LI recruitment. The survey was conducted in fourteen U.S. dental schools that received Pipeline grants and had an overall response rate of 60 percent (n=1,027) from the 1,713 faculty members who received the survey. A majority (57 percent) of faculty members strongly agreed that extramural rotations should continue as an integral part of students' education; 51 percent felt the same about the continuation of URM/LI recruitment programs. Multivariate logistic regression analyses revealed that faculty type, perception of extramural rotations being a positive experience, increased student productivity, and school culture were significant determinants of support for continuation of the extramural rotation programs. Determinants of support for continuation of the URM/LI recruitment programs were faculty type, perception of URM/LI recruitment effectiveness, perception of students from diverse backgrounds improving educational experience, and having a school mission statement that supports URM/LI recruitment. Pipeline schools should ensure that their extramural faculty remain key players in the Pipeline programs, widely publicize the programs' successes, and develop a service-oriented culture in order to build and sustain faculty perceptions that these programs should continue as integral parts of the schools' educational mission. (+info)
Educational, personal, and cultural attributes of dental students' humanitarian trips to Latin America.
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This article evaluates the educational, personal, and cultural attributes that motivate or inhibit dental students' participation in humanitarian and educational trips to underserved communities in Latin America. Interviews, concentrating on students' expectations and experiences, were conducted with students who participated in the trips and with those who did not. A survey of a larger group of students (including those interviewed) was also conducted; the survey included demographic data, ethnic affiliation, cultural competence, motivators and inhibitors to attend trips, and trip attributes. One hundred and seventy-four students at one dental school completed the survey; the group interviews were conducted with twenty-three students who attended humanitarian and educational trips and nine students who did not. This research found that skill development, educational opportunity, and philanthropy were the most important motivators for trip participation. Cost and time commitments were the strongest inhibitors to participate. Exposure to infectious diseases, substandard working and living conditions, threat of crime, and language barriers were mostly considered as "not important." However, female dental students were more concerned than males about crime, living conditions, and infectious diseases during the trips. Cultural education, increased knowledge, cross-cultural professional relationships, increased self-confidence, and public health awareness were the most important attributes of the trips. This study indicates that the undergraduate humanitarian educational trips to underserved Latin American communities have a most significant personal, professional, and social impact on dental students. (+info)