Striving for Indigenous intercultural student development through medical education
The area of cross-cultural and intercultural development, as it pertains to Aboriginal peoples and other Indigenous populations around the world, is rapidly evolving. Over the last five decades, an increasing focus on developing the cross-cultural and intercultural capability of medical professionals in Australia, and indeed globally, has reportedly done little to improve the experiences and outcomes of Indigenous peoples within mainstream healthcare. Applying a convergent parallel mixed methods design, this research aimed to investigate the impact of medical education on student cross-cultural and intercultural capability by comparing results of first and final year medical students, using three previously validated surveys. Research yarning was also used to gather a range of Aboriginal perspectives regarding appropriate and effective approaches to student Aboriginal intercultural development within Australian medical education. The results of the survey demonstrated minimal variation between first and final year students, regarding Aboriginal cross-cultural and intercultural capability, with yarn findings revealing a range of barriers to such development within current approaches in medical education. Research yarns also indicated the importance of centring critical skills as foundational components of medical student Aboriginal intercultural development and for the ‘humanisation’ of medical practice. Despite revealing a profound paucity of intercultural development capability through the student survey, the findings of the research yarns indicate that current approaches to student development in this context are both inadequate and potentially harmful. Medical education institutions must focus their efforts on developing the critical skills of students if Aboriginal intercultural development is to be meaningfully realised.
Date: 7 February 2024, 10:00 (Wednesday, 4th week, Hilary 2024)
Venue: Webinar (MS Teams)
Speaker: Dr Paul Saunders (School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, Australia)
Organiser: Oxford Global Health Society
Organiser contact email address: melvin.obadha@univ.ox.ac.uk
Part of: Global Health DPhil Discourse
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: http://tinyurl.com/GHDD0224
Audience: Public
Editor: Melvin Obadha