Improving cross-cultural communication in health professions education

In the District of Columbia, health education programs are required for all students, yet inner-city elementary public charter schools do not have enough funding to hire nursing personnel in their schools to provide such programs to their students. Therefore, some public charter school administrators partner with community agencies to bring additional cost-free resources to their schools. However, collaborative and partnership activities in DC can be fraught with racial strife. This article describes the partnership between the Georgetown University School of Nursing & Health Studies, the School of Medicine, and select DC elementary schools and presents a specific example of one partnership between the University and an elementary public charter school. The article describes a communication breakdown between the predominately Caucasian nursing and medical students and the predominately African American faculty, staff, and students of the public charter school, with suggestions about how to avoid and overcome such conflicts in the future.