Jonathan M. Metzl, MD, PhD and Dorothy E. Roberts, JD
The call for structural competency encourages medicine to broaden its approach to matters of race and culture so that it might better address both individual-level doctor and patient characteristics and institutional factors.
Nancy Berlinger, PhD and Annalise Berlinger, BSN, RN
Physicians’ reliance on “culture” to explain patients’ noncompliance may serve as code for their discomfort with difference, uncertainty, and distress.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(6):608-616. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.6.msoc1-1706.
The Columbia University Community Pediatrics Program incorporates cultural competency training into its curricula by requiring residents to participate in community service programs.
Cross-cultural ethics should be regarded by physicians as an area of medical expertise that can help resolve conflicts that arise between the health traditions of international patients and those traditions that are upheld in the United States.