Cross-cultural undergraduate medical education in North America: theoretical concepts and educational approaches

Cross-cultural undergraduate medical education in North America lacks conceptual clarity. Consequently, school curricula are unsystematic, nonuniform, and fragmented. This article provides a literature review about available conceptual models of cross-cultural medical education. The clarification of these models may inform the development of effective educational programs to enable students to provide better quality care to patients from diverse sociocultural backgrounds.

The approaches to cross-cultural health education can be organized under the rubric of two specific conceptual models: cultural competence and critical culturalism. The variation in the conception of culture adopted in these two models results in differences in all curricular components: learning outcomes, content, educational strategies, teaching methods, student assessment, and program evaluation.

Medical schools could benefit from more theoretical guidance on the learning outcomes, content, and educational strategies provided to them by governing and licensing bodies. More student assessments and program evaluations are needed in order to appraise the effectiveness of cross-cultural undergraduate medical education.