The institutional context of multicultural education: what is your institutional curriculum?

Full Abstract

Recently revised accreditation standards require medical schools and residency training programs to integrate multicultural training into their curricula. Most multicultural training models concern the educational outcomes of individual trainees who have received digestible "units" of multicultural education or "cultural competence" training designed for trainees' individual consumption. Few have taken a critical perspective on how an individual trainee must learn, change his or her behavior, and sustain that behavioral change within a specific institutional context. The authors discuss the educational impact of one's institutional learning environment--the institution's ethos, teachers, modeling, policies, and processes--on the multicultural education of physician trainees. A usable conceptual model is offered with which educators can identify those dimensions of one's "institutional curriculum" that may enhance or obstruct trainees' optimal learning and behavior change regarding issues of multiculturalism in medicine. Comparisons are drawn to the recent medical literature concerning professionalism education and the hidden curriculum. Distinctions are drawn between overlapping areas of planned, received, intended, and unintended learning and values, as communicated from faculty, attendings, and residents to students. Ways of maximizing ideal learning and minimizing unintended consequences are discussed. The goal is for medical educators to be able to ask, What is the institutional curriculum of my training program regarding issues of race, difference, etc? What elements of that institutional curriculum can be recaptured and reclaimed as consistent with and supportive of tenets of excellent patient care for all?

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Author information

Author/s: Murray-García, Jann L (JL); García, Jorge A (JA);

Affiliation: Division of General Internal Medicine, University of California-Davis School of Medicine, Davis, California 95718-1460, USA.

Grants: D55 HP00232 (Agency:United States PHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Journal: Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges (Acad Med), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-Jul; vol 83 (issue 7) : pp 646-52

Dates: Created 2008/06/26; Completed 2008/07/22;

PMID: 18580080, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

Comments and Corrections

CommentIn: Acad Med. 2008 Jul;83(7):625-6. (PMID: 18580075)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Cultural Competency
Cultural Diversity
Curriculum
Education, Medical, Graduate - standards
Education, Medical, Undergraduate - organization & administration

Education, Medical, Undergraduate - organization & administration
Humans
Models, Theoretical
Schools, Medical - organization & administration
United States

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