RESUMO
Background: Although traditional and cultural health practices are widely used in Colombia, physicians are not trained to address intercultural tensions that arise in clinical practice. Cultural safety encourages practitioners to examine how their own culture shapes their clinical practice and to respect their patients' culture. It requires inviting patients of non-dominant cultures to co-design culturally safe health care. We co-designed a curriculum for cultural safety training of Colombian health professionals. Methods: A sequential-consensual qualitative study defined the learning objectives of the curriculum. Semi-structured questionnaires and focus groups explored the opinions of traditional medicine users, medical students, and intercultural health experts to inform the content of the curriculum. Deliberative dialogue between key intercultural health experts settled the academic content of the curriculum. A member-checking strategy modified and approved the final version. Results: Seven traditional medicine users, six medical students, and four intercultural health experts participated in the study. The stakeholders defined five learning objectives: (a) culturally unsafe practices: acknowledge the intercultural tensions and its consequences; (b) cultural awareness: examine their attitudes, beliefs, and values, and how they shape their professional practice; (c) cultural humility: listen and learn from the patients' traditional practices; (d) cultural competence: describe current pedagogical approaches to address intercultural tensions; and (e) cultural safety: discuss with patients to reach an agreement on their treatment. Conclusion: This study integrated the perspectives of different stakeholders and proposed new applications of cultural safety that are relevant to other countries. Researchers and educators can use these results to inform future cultural safety initiatives.
Contexte: Bien que les pratiques traditionnelles et culturelles en matière de santé soient largement utilisées en Colombie, les médecins ne sont pas formés pour faire face aux tensions interculturelles qui peuvent surgir dans le contexte clinique. La sécurité culturelle encourage les praticiens à s'interroger sur les façons dont leur propre culture influence leur pratique clinique et à respecter la culture de leurs patients. Elle exige qu'ils invitent leurs patients de cultures non dominantes à co-concevoir des soins de santé culturellement sûrs. Nous avons co-conçu un programme de formation en sécurité culturelle pour les professionnels de santé colombiens. Méthodes: Les objectifs d'apprentissage du programme ont été définis sur la base d'une étude qualitative séquentielle-consensuelle. Par le biais de questionnaires semi-structurés et de groupes de discussion, nous avons exploré les opinions d'utilisateurs de la médecine traditionnelle, d'étudiants en médecine et d'experts en santé interculturelle dans le but de définir le contenu du cursus de façon éclairée. Son contenu académique a été finalisé à la suite d'un dialogue délibératif entre les principaux experts en santé interculturelle. Une vérification par les membres a permis de modifier et d'approuver la version finale. Résultats: Sept utilisateurs de la médecine traditionnelle, six étudiants en médecine et quatre experts en santé interculturelle ont participé à l'étude. Les parties prenantes ont défini cinq objectifs d'apprentissage : (a) pratiques culturellement non sécuritaires : reconnaître les tensions interculturelles et leurs conséquences; (b) prise de conscience culturelle : examiner leurs attitudes, croyances et valeurs, et la manière dont elles façonnent s pratiques professionnelles; (c) humilité culturelle : écouter et apprendre des pratiques traditionnelles des patients; (d) compétence culturelle : décrire les approches pédagogiques actuelles sur la question des tensions interculturelles; et (e) sécurité culturelle : discuter avec les patients pour parvenir à un terrain d'entente sur leur traitement. Conclusion: Cette étude intègre les perspectives de différentes parties prenantes et propose de nouvelles applications de la sécurité culturelle qui seraient également pertinentes dans d'autres pays. Les chercheurs et les enseignants peuvent utiliser ces résultats pour alimenter des initiatives futures en matière de sécurité culturelle.
RESUMO
Problem: The Colombian government provides health services grounded in the Western biomedical model, yet 40% of the population use cultural and traditional practices to maintain their health. Adversarial interactions between physicians and patients from other cultures hinder access to quality health services and reinforce health disparities. Cultural safety is an approach to medical training that encourages practitioners to examine how their own culture shapes their clinical practice and how to respect their patients' worldviews. This approach could help bridge the cultural divide in Colombian health services, improving multicultural access to health services and reducing health disparities. Intervention: In 2016, we conducted a pilot cultural safety training program in Cota, Colombia. A five-month training program for medical students included: (a) theoretical training on cultural safety and participatory research, and (b) a community-based intervention, co-designed by community leaders, training supervisors, and the medical students, with the aim of strengthening cultural practices related to health. Evaluation used the Most Significant Change narrative approach, which allows participants to communicate the changes most meaningful to them. Using an inductive thematic analysis, the authors analyzed the stories and discussed these findings in a debriefing session with the medical students. Context: Cota is located only 15 kilometers from Bogota, the national capital and biggest city of Colombia, so the small town has gone through rapid urbanization and cultural change. A few decades ago, inhabitants of Cota were mainly peasants with Indigenous and European traditions. Urbanization displaced agriculture with industrial and commercial occupations. One consequence of this change was loss of cultural health care practices and resources, for example, medicinal plants, that the community had used for centuries. Impact: A group of 13 final-year medical students (ten female and three male, age range 20-24) participated in the study. The medical students listed four areas of change after their experience: increased respect for traditional health practices to provide better healthcare; increased recognition of traditional practices as part of their cultural heritage and identity; a desire to deepen their knowledge about cultural practices; and openness to incorporate cultural practices in healthcare. Lessons Learned: Medical students reported positive perceptions of their patients' cultural practices after participating in this community-based training program. The training preceded a positive shift in perceptions and was accepted by Colombian medical students. To the best of our knowledge, this was the first documented cultural safety training initiative with medical students in Colombia and an early attempt to apply the cultural safety approach outside the Indigenous experience.