|  |
A Comparison of the Effectiveness of a Cultural Competency Simulation (BaFa)
on First Year Medical Students and Pediatric Residents Christopher B. White1,
Peggy J. Wagner 2, Valera L. Hudson 1, Michelle
R. Johnson 2 and T. Andrew Albritton 3. 1Pediatrics,
2Family Medicine, and 3Internal Medicine, Medical College
of Georgia, Augusta, GA. Objective: The objective of this study was
to evaluate the effectiveness of the cultural competency simulation exercise,
BaFa, on medical student and resident cultural empathy, and to compare differences
between medical students and residents cultural empathy.
Design/Methods:
168 first year medical students and 31 pediatric residents anonymously completed
the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (SEE) (Wang, et al., 2003) before and after
participating in BaF. The SEE measures 4 factors: Feeling and Expression, Perspective
Taking, Acceptance, and Awareness. Paired t-tests were used to identify pre/post
differences on the 4 factors, and repeated measure analysis of variance was used
to identify differences between residents and students.
Results:
Significant differences between mean scores on Perspective Taking were found for
medical students and residents, while Residents also showed a significant difference
on Acceptance. Medical students had consistently greater self evaluations than
residents on all 4 factors
Conclusions: Based on self-reported data,
the BaFa simulation helped both medical students and residents increase their
ability to understand the point of view of another culture. The simulation also
helped residents improve their acceptance of people in other cultures. An unexpected
finding was that medical students had a much higher opinion of their own cultural
competence in all areas compared with residents. This finding may parallel stages
of cultural competence (Cross et al, 1989) and indicate that awareness of personal
bias is an important step in acquiring competence. |
