Preaching to the (culturally-aware) choir

I do apologize for being totally AWOL. I have since started medical school, and because this is the week of our first exam, I am SERIOUSLY PROCRASTINATING! But also, we started a new unit in our "fuzzy" half of the curriculum, and an event in today's class particularly bothered me. I've copied the post I wrote on my own blog, below.

Wish me luck! It all goes down Friday!

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Today, we began the small-groups sessions of our Communications class. This is where we're going to learn to gain patients' trust, built empathy, and overall communicate effectively. Part of this class requires us to research some "difficult topic", and then make a presentation to the group and practice the scenario with a patient instructor.

My school is starting this new program, a pilot, really, where they want to introduce culturally sticky situations into the repertoire of uncomfortable topics and situations. So, during our first small-group session, today, in the midst of our introducing ourselves to each other and talking about our backgrounds, one of the course's co-directors came in to talk about this program. At the end, she passed out the handouts that explained the pilot and asked interested parties to take one.

Everyone did EXCEPT the two white-male students in the group.

After everyone talked about where they were from, including those of us born in or have traveled extensively abroad (at least three of us), it just does not seem right. Here in medical school, you should be learning to deal with people from other cultures, and it shouldn't be optional. You're not really going to have the option of excluding cultural groups from your practice*, so shouldn't you be learning how to "be respectful at all times" within a variety of contexts? No, not an exhaustive course in the nuances of every cultures, but rather an idea of the variance in interpretations of major life crises and sickness.

Maybe it is because these two men intend to practice in their home states, somewhere rural, maybe. An all-WASP town. However, you're here now. You're in Chicago, with the largest Hispanic population outside Los Angeles, with social problems of gentrification, amongst other aspects and issues of diversity. You can't hide from it.

It's not even a matter of the school's curriculum, although I think there are limitations to that - there's a couple sessions (a handful of hours) of cultural sensitivity training in the spring. But in a room where you are the only WASPs amongst your peers, it's a slap in the face of everyone else that you passed the stack of sheets on - totally uninterested in (or most likely oblivious to) bridging the gap - and passed on the opportunity to seem empathetic within your own classroom. Honestly, if you're going to be offensive to your peers on the first day of class, I can only wonder how you, after you have the "M" and "D" next to your Anglican surname, will treat the patients whose names you cannot pronounce, who you may have to speak to with an interpreter, or who are scared and apprehensive or overly obedient because they come from another culture.

Will you show them the same kind of empathy you showed us today?

*No, you should not be excluding cultural groups from your practice. Unless you are racist. Which, if you are, that's a whole other ethical issue.

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Any questions/comments you want to direct specifically to me can be sent to: da period pan period jin atsign gmail period com.