Beyond Humility: Empowering Minoritized Learners Through Culturally Reflective Medicine

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter and other antiracism justice movements, medical education is evolving to incorporate health equity principles for all medical students and residents, while also increasing institutional diversity recruitment of minoritized physicians. As the demographics of U.S. medical trainees shift to reflect a rapidly evolving patient population, the prevalence of culturally concordant patient-physician visits, where patients share elements of language, religion, customs, and identities with their physician, is also expected to increase. However, existing antiracist curricula are standardized to all learners and there is a dearth of cultural sensitivity training designed specifically for minoritized learners to interrogate the culturally concordant space they share with patients and mentors. In this article, the authors propose a new model for minoritized learners' cultural training, culturally reflective medicine (CRM) that identifies unanticipated tensions that may arise as minoritized learners bridge both White and Eurocentric professional and personal identities, examines how intersectionality can both strengthen encounters and lead to shared blind spots, and empowers minoritized physicians with tools for self- and group reflection to advocate for their communities. CRM is contextualized within the current landscape of cultural sensitivity training in medical education. The authors provide 2 clinical vignettes to demonstrate how CRM can unveil more nuanced understandings of health disparities than existing cultural training. As institutions work toward diversity, equity, justice, and antioppression, CRM provides a novel framework for redesigning medical education that better acknowledges and incorporates the unique knowledge of minoritized learners.