Culture Safety
Based on the accreditation element on cultural safety, the medical curriculum must provide opportunities for our students to learn to recognize and appropriately address gender and cultural biases in themselves, in others, and in the health care delivery process.
The Professional Portfolio course at Schulich Medicine provides opportunity for students to develop awareness of their own biases under a year-long mentor relationship during each of the first three years of the program.
Portfolio mentors work with students individually to explore underlying assumptions and facilitate awareness of alternative perspectives that might differ from the student’s. As well consideration of bias is given specific emphasis during Patient Centred Clinical Methods and Patient Centred Clinical Integration & Application (PCCIA).The curriculum must also include instruction in the following:
- The manner in which people of diverse cultures and belief systems perceive health and illness and respond to various symptoms, diseases, and treatments;
- The basic principles of culturally competent health care;
- The recognition and development of solutions for health care disparities;
- The importance of meeting the health care needs of medically underserved populations;
- The development of core professional attributes (e.g., altruism, accountability) needed to provide effective care in a multidimensional and diverse society.
