Educating Medical Students’ “Hearts and Minds”: A Humanities-Informed Cultural Immersion Program in Indigenous Experiential Community Learning

Abstract


 
 
 Well-documented disparities in health status persist between Indigenous and non- Indigenous people in Canada. Medical schools have a responsibility to address underlying causes of these inequities, in part by developing future physicians’ cultural humility and their capacities in cultural safety by increasing critical anti- racism knowledge and understandings about First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples. Undergraduate medical education relies heavily on, among other pedagogies, experiential learning. Moreover, a growing body of research is evidencing the value of applying humanities-informed approaches to medical education in order to produce “better doctors” (i.e., physicians who are more empathetic, compassionate, and attuned to wholistic orientations to patient wellness). The combined impact of these two approaches (experiential learning and humanities-informed pedagogies) on medical students’ development of cultural humility and capacities in cultural safety with Indigenous Peoples is unknown. This paper describes how the First Nations Community Education Program—an innovative humanities-informed Indigenous cultural immersion program—was developed and implemented as a collaborative project of the Northern Medical Program (itself the result of a partnership between the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Medicine and the University of Northern British Columbia), the First Nations Health Authority, and Northern Health. The paper also documents impacts of the program and provides a resource for other medical education programs considering similar initiatives focused on cultural humility or the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.
 
 

A Systematic Review of Educational Interventions and Their Impact on Empathy and Compassion of Undergraduate Medical Students

“…A wealth of teaching pedagogies has been used to develop empathy, compassion and respect for patients in medical students (30)(31)(32)(33) These include, but not limited to, patients' narratives and creative arts, drama workshops, communication skills, reflective writing, video-based learning and experiential learning (34)(35)(36)(37). Lastly, the impact of role modeling and hidden curriculum in teaching compassion and empathy is well-established (38)(39)(40).…”

Stand Up for Indigenous Health: A Simulation to Educate Residents About the Social Determinants of Health Faced by Indigenous Peoples in Canada

“…8 This type of transformative learning fosters cultural humility and safety and helps build core medical competencies. 8…”

“…8 This type of transformative learning fosters cultural humility and safety and helps build core medical competencies. 8 Successful community-based immersive training experiences in Indigenous health have been implemented into medical training programs in Canada. 8 Unfortunately, these experiences are limited by Indigenous communities' capacity to work with medical learners, costs associated with these experiences, and time constraints in the medical curriculum.…”

“…8 Successful community-based immersive training experiences in Indigenous health have been implemented into medical training programs in Canada. 8 Unfortunately, these experiences are limited by Indigenous communities' capacity to work with medical learners, costs associated with these experiences, and time constraints in the medical curriculum. 6 While studying as medical students in Canada, we developed an experiential learning tool called Stand Up for Indigenous Health (SU4IH)-an immersive 2-hour simulation where participants navigate a series of scenarios as an Indigenous person-in an effort to expand access to community-driven Indigenous health curricula, which were absent in our own learning experience.…”

“…7 Experiential learning, however, has the potential to disrupt medical learners' assumptions and transform their understanding of Indigenous peoples through critical self-reflection. 8 This type of transformative learning fosters cultural humility and safety and helps build core medical competencies. 8 Successful community-based immersive training experiences in Indigenous health have been implemented into medical training programs in Canada.…”