Cultural competence
I have been asked to speak at International Week where I work - the topic is cultural competence. I wrote a paper after I did my faculty exchange in the Netherlands this past June, and it apparently sent a buzz around my building. That's the last time that I knock myself out to produce a quality product .....

So I've been sitting at my computer this morning trying to find interesting facts about different cultures so that my presentation isn't too boring. What the hell do I know about cultural competence? The premise of my paper and my talk is that our institution needs to do a better job at preparing our students for the multicultural patient population that they will be working with. Toronto is extremely diverse - pretty soon white, English speaking people will be the majority minority. I've done a lot of work with our ESL (English as a second language) students and I am horrified at how some of them are treated! I remember a comment that I received back when our program was just starting (about 6 years ago) - "can you send us some nice white students who have a name that you can actually pronounce?" Whoa.

Let's face it, we all have grown up with our own mental models and personal biases. How many times have you been pissed off at a really bad driver and thought "damn, must be a stupid Chinese person driving". Come on - admit it. Or made fun of how people from India talk ("birdee birdee num nums") or .... you get the picture. We all have these somewhat rascist stereotypes in us. When I was in Europe I was asked if I was American a lot - when I told people that no, I was Canadian the look of relief on their faces was very noticeable. I heard a lot of comments about "stupid Americans", and it wasn't just from the Europeans, it was from other travellers as well. Anyhow, the papers written about cultural competence in medical education have started to indicate that we need to have conversations with our students about the stereotypes that we carry around inside of us. I'm just trying to figure out a way to do this safely without getting a complaint lodged against me!