Going Off Script: Cultural Responsiveness in the Face of Standardization

• In Event: 33.033 - Research on Training Professionals for Practice in a Multicultural Society

Abstract

Professionals in fields of human improvement (medicine, education, counseling) increasingly face potential tension between standardization and cultural responsiveness. Findings from a comparative case study of an LGBT standardized patient encounter in undergraduate medical education reveal how future physicians’ positioning with respect to a standardized form affected their responsiveness to the patient. A qualitative analysis of the data suggests that the medical students’ positioning of the power as either in the form or in the patient influenced whether they elicited important diagnostic information and how well they responded with preventive counseling. Implications are considered specifically for teacher education but also more generally for related fields.

Author

• Elizabeth Anne Self, Vanderbilt University