Teaching Cultural Competence to Psychiatry Residents: Seven Core Concepts and Their Implications for Therapeutic...

The authors describe the Tulane Model for teaching cultural competence to psychiatry residents in order to outline an innovative approach to curricula development in academic psychiatry. The authors focus on the didactic experience that takes place during the first and second postgraduate years and present seven core concepts that should inform the emerging clinician's thinking in the formulation of every clinical case. The authors discuss the correspondence between each core concept and the Outline for Cultural Formulation, introduced in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-IV and updated in DSM-5. The authors illustrate how each of the core concepts is utilized as a guideline for teaching residents a process for eliciting culturally relevant information from their patients and their personal histories and how to apply that knowledge in the assessment and treatment of patients in clinical settings.