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.
A case that illustrates how Western medicine's body or mind approach to diagnosis and treatment can differ from that of many patients from non-Western cultures.
When serving an ethnically diverse population, it is imperative that physicians have an understanding of a patients' cultural background and attitudes towards health, nutrition and personal care.