Growth in Cross-Cultural Competency Improves Patient Care

In the task force's first workshop, Lopez helped develop cases dealing with cultural competency along with asking workshop members to bring in patient cases of their own.

Here, the task force was divided into work groups and each group developed their own scenarios around the patient cases that were brought to or developed at the workshop. Once each group developed its own patient case, it presented to the other members of the task force. After the presentation of the idea, the group received critiques.

At the conclusion of the workshop, the task force members were asked to go home and develop the case further and give suggestions on how these topics could be taught.

Each group had to come up with the learning objectives of the case, a narrative or case summary, a teacher's guide (explanation of case background), and then provide a bibliography and any visual aids that may have been acquired.

For example, one group created a case scenario on a pregnant HIV-positive patient who wanted the obstetrics team to lie about her condition, while another team explored issues of culture and trust: human trafficking, gynecology, and contraception.

"The biggest frustration of the task force was that they still did not know how to implement these processes," says Correa. "So we brought Lopez back, and did a role play with the case studies we had developed from the first workshop."

In this workshop, two or three work cases were chosen to role play. Members of the task force would take one of the cases, and then act it out. The group would then critique the case that was acted out, and learn how to actually put this into practice with their teachings.

To learn more about the cross-cultural residency training program that Albert Einstein College of Medicine developed, see the November issue of Briefings on Patient Safety.