ANTC61H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Intercultural Competence
Document Summary
Cross-cultural misunderstanding led lia"s problems in the book the spirit catches you and you. Fadiman ends her book by expressing the hope that medical schools and training programs will recognize the need to train students in cross-cultural medicine. That is now happening in medical schools. Idea was that immigrants unfamiliarity and discomfort with american practice, and physicians" discomfort and unfamiliarity with immigrant beliefs leads to a cultural distance b/n immigrants and western health care. The main call has being to eliminate racial and ethnical disparities in the quality of health care. Paper argues that the mismatch b/n the motivation behind the design of cross-cultural education programs and the motivation behind their current application creates significant problems. In trying to define cultural boundaries or norms, the programs inadvertently reinforce racial and ethnic biases and stereotypes. The cultural competence programs sometimes makes the mistake of viewing culture as a fixed, knowable entity that guides individuals" behaviour in linear ways.
