QUALITY: "Works Well With Others" is The Way to Be

How many of us take for granted the racial or ethnic background of our physicians? Do we even think about how our doctors interact with their other patients? Our immense national diversity leads many of us to accept varying backgrounds and cultural beliefs, and to also appreciate the health care we receive. Training of our doctors, however, to work with those from backgrounds different from their own is something new to the medical school establishment.

A study released today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (a themed issue on medical education)  surveyed medical students and found that  "attending medical schools with high levels of racial and ethnic diversity may better prepare white medical students to care for minority patients". The authors analyzed web-based surveys of over 20,000 graduating medical students from 118 medical schools.

As one might expect, minority med students were 33 percent more likely to rate themselves as highly prepared to care for minority patients. Nearly half of  underrepresented minority students planned to practice in underserved areas. The definitive message of the study: that learning to work with diversity is a positive, and ultimately will result in higher quality health outcomes for all. Medical schools need to both reassess their admissions processes (to increase diversity among their student body) and make training in cultural competency (read our thoughts here) a requirement, not just a choice.

In this month's Health Affairs, an article cites the need for better patient activation in managing their own health, as a tool for shrinking the racial health disparities gap. Assuring quality, affordable, patient-centered care to all Americans can be another. Doctors trained to deal with individuals from various racial and ethnic backgrounds can also help significantly in closing the racial health dispartities gap. For, as the JAMA article tells us, rather alarmingly, when less than half of graduating med students think that access to care is not a major problem, and not everyone is entitled to adequate health care, someone is missing out and not everyone is working together.