Ethics, Cultural Competence, and the Changing Face of America

• Published in: Pastoral psychology 2013-04, Vol.62 (2), p.175-188
• Main Authors: Laws, Terri, Chilton, Janice A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Behavioral Science and Psychology; Bioethics; Censuses; Clinical Psychology; Cross Cultural Psychology; Cultural competence; Culture; Doctors; Epilepsy; Ethics; Falls; Health status; Hmong people; Interdisciplinary approach; Landscapes; Medicine; Minority & ethnic groups; Multiculturalism & pluralism; Parents & parenting; Patients; Physicians; Population; Psychology; Religion; Religious Studies; Sociology; Spirituality; Workplace diversity
• ISSN: 0031-2789; 1573-6679
• DOI: 10.1007/s11089-012-0428-1

The population in the United States is increasingly multicultural. So, too, is the U.S. physician workforce. The combination of these diversity dynamics sets up the potential for various types of cultural conflict in the nation’s examining rooms, including the relationship between religion and medicine. To address the changing patient-physician landscape, we argue for a broad scale intervention: interdisciplinary bioethics training for physicians and other health professionals. This approach seeks to promote a common procedural expectation and language which can lead to an improved, patient-centered approach resulting in better patient-physician relationships that contribute to better health outcomes across the U.S. population. The authors illustrate their thesis and solution using a well-known case of cross-cultural dynamics taken from religion and medicine—Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down.