Defining a framework for medical teachers’ competencies to teach ethnic and cultural diversity: Results of a European Delphi study

Figures & data

Table

Practice points

Ten essential competencies for all medical teachers were identified. Essential competencies related to the execution of teaching are: ability to critically reflect on own values and beliefs; ability to communicate about individuals in a nondiscriminatory, nonstereotyping way; empathy for patients regardless of ethnicity, race or nationality; awareness of intersectionality; awareness of own ethnic and cultural background; knowledge of ethnic and social determinants of physical and mental health of migrants; ability to reflect with students on the social or cultural context of the patient relevant to the medical encounter. Essential competencies related to the coaching of the learning process of students are: awareness that teachers are role models in the way they talk about patients from different ethnic, cultural and social backgrounds; empathy for students of diverse ethnic, cultural and social background; ability to engage, motivate and let all students participate.

Table 1. Questionnaire used in the first round of the Delphi study.

Please be as exhaustive as possible in listing the teaching competencies that you believe to be necessary for teaching the following cultural competencies to medical students (clinical and preclinical):
Cultural competencies for medical students	Necessary teaching competencies
Knowledge about key social science concepts including “culture” and “ethnicity”
Knowledge of how social and culturalfactors can affect health, health related behaviors and health care
Knowledge about key patient population groups to be identified for any local site (migration history, social conditions,specific health care needs, epidemiological data, risk factors, etc.)
Awareness of implicit attitudes, including how one’s own norms, values and biases may affect health care provision
Awareness of how culture shapes individual behavior and thinking (including thecultures of medicine)
Ability to work effectively with an interpreter
Ability to identify and take into account socio-cultural factors that may influence patient care (e.g. provide a treatment plan that takes into account the patient’s social and cultural context).

Figure 1. Process of the Delphi study.

Table 2. Teaching competencies reaching 75 % consensus.

Execution of teaching
1	Ability to critically reflect on own values and beliefs (93%)
2	Ability to communicate about individuals from ethnic, social and cultural groups in a nondiscriminatory, nonstereotyping way (91%)
3	Empathy (understanding and compassion) for patients regardless of ethnicity, race or nationality (85%)
4	Awareness of intersectionality (different interrelated dimensions of one person/patient, e.g. culture, social class, gender, disability, religion, sexual orientation) (79%)
5	Awareness of own ethnic and (sub)cultural background/standards (76%)
6	Knowledge of ethnic and social determinants of physical and mental health of migrants (e.g. risk factors, unfamiliar diseases, epidemiology (premigratory, migratory and postmigratory factors) and barriers to health care, relevant in the country, including undocumented patients (75%)
7	Ability to reflect with students on the social or cultural context of the patient relevant to the medical encounter (e.g. diagnose-telling and decision-making in case of cancer treatment, organ transplantation, palliative care) (75%)
Coaching of the learning process of students
8	Awareness that teachers are role models in the way they talk about patients from different ethnic, cultural and social backgrounds (91%)
9	Empathy (understanding and compassion) for students of diverse ethnic,cultural and social background (82%)
10	Ability to engage, motivate and let participate all students (76%)