Developing Cross-Cultural Communication Teaching for Medical Students

Cultural competency is crucial to providing compassionate and effective healthcare. Although a large proportion of UK medical schools include this in their curriculum, evidence exists that it is not well taught. This also applies internationally, reasons for which are unclear. At Manchester, we set about questioning whether we can harness the cultural diversity of students themselves to improve delivery by means of developing an enquiry-based, student-led learning module in cross-cultural communication. Clinical staff, students and patients at Manchester Royal Infirmary and Rusholme Health Centre were interviewed to provide examples of cross-cultural dilemmas faced; these were developed into role-play scenarios by a student team and piloted with student volunteers and simulated patients at a ‘Diversity workshop’. Focus groups were held to discuss learning outcomes. Preliminary findings show that students want more training on cross-cultural issues and that students themselves can successfully develop their own teaching material using Enquiry-Based Learning. Formal discourse analysis and student evaluation will be used to refine and integrate a similar workshop into the current communication curriculum a