Medical Student Knowledge of Native Hawaiian Obstetrics

Abstract

Indigenous people across the world face large health disparities. Research indicates that cultural insensitivity may contribute to negative health outcomes. Culturally competent care in the health field is needed to help address the disparities.

Since the medical school accrediting body, Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), mandated the inclusion of cross-cultural training into the curriculum, much research has been published on the efficacy of teaching methods. Programs that trained students in cultural competency showed increases in knowledge, patient skills, and awareness of factors involved in the patient-provider relationship (Jernigan, et al., 2016). Trainings are usually generalized to more than one culture and some are done in the pre-clinical years. However, students are not able to apply the content to practice or understand specific aspects of a culture in context to a specialty until their clinical 3rd year rotations.