The purpose of this proposed work is to develop curricula and training programs to enhance the cultural competence of clinicians from early medical school, through residency, and into diverse practice settings. This work builds on the investigator's experience in developing the CRASH-course in cultural competency, which has been used across the U.S. to train health professionals and medical administrators. CRASH is a mnemonic that stands for Culture, Respect, Assessment / Affirmation, Sensitivity / Self-Awareness, and Humility.
Specific Aims i nclude the following: 1. To learn from """"""""the real experts"""""""", i.e., the community, patients, and their families, by conducting surveys and focus groups to identify specific deficits in cultural competency that they have encountered in their interactions with physicians and other health care professionals. This input will be supplemented with input from a diverse group of national experts. 2. To create a longitudinal series of enhancements to the medical education program from the first year of medical school through residency to lifelong practice in diverse communities to help trainees to become culturally competent in a diverse range of multi-cultural practice settings. 3. To create a balanced curriculum to achieve change in knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behaviors. The three dimensions of our curriculum are the classroom (didactics, discussions, and case studies), the clinical skills lab (cultural OSCE's and standardized patient encounters), and diverse clinical training sites. 4. To become the nation's leading resource for cultural competency training materials and programs related to the African-American community, and to black-white """"""""racial competence"""""""". 5. To build assessment and evaluation tools into every component of the curriculum, both to create validated instruments for measuring cultural competence, as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of our training interventions. 6. To disseminate these programs, training tools, and resources widely through presentations, workshops, peer-reviewed publication, and web-based products such as archived training tools, web-based tutorials, etc.
| Rust, George; Kondwani, Kofi; Martinez, Ruben et al. (2006) A crash-course in cultural competence. Ethn Dis 16:S3-29-36 |
