Target Audience

Southern Medical Journal (SMJ) is an interdisciplinary, multi-specialty Journal, and articles span the spectrum of medical topics, providing timely, up-to-date information for primary care physicians and specialists alike. The SMJ enables physicians to provide the best possible care to patients in this age of rapidly changing modern medicine.  Therefore, the readers of the SMJ are an appropriate target for this article.

Description

Education in cultural competence is critical to training medical students to care for patients from all backgrounds. Significant variability exists in the quality of feedback provided to students following the direct observation of cross-cultural clinical skills. Medical student experience in directly observed cross-cultural encounters within two clinical clerkships was observed, and areas of need for further resident and faculty training in providing high-quality feedback following these encounters were identified:

• Cultural misunderstandings between physicians and patients/caregivers are one of the leading causes of healthcare errors, particularly diagnostic errors.
• Diagnostic errors during healthcare encounters are one of the leading causes of healthcare mistakes.
• Many healthcare errors are preventable. This is particularly true for errors due to cultural and language misunderstandings.

At the conclusion of the activity, learners should be better prepared to:

1. Recognize the very substantial risks for misunderstandings and medical errors when an appropriate medical interpreter is not used to translate when patients/caregivers and physicians/other healthcare staff are communicating during a healthcare encounter.
2. Develop a process for utilizing appropriate medical interpreters during healthcare encounters to minimize the risks of medical errors when healthcare staff are working with patients/caregivers who speak foreign languages.
3. Implement a process for use of appropriate medical interpreters when patients/caregivers do not speak the samenlanguage.
4. Implement other analogous processes for use when other types of cultural differences apart from language differences exist between healthcare staff and patients/caregivers.

Course Information

CME Release Date: May 4, 2023
Valid for credit through:  May 3, 2026  
Course type: Journal CME/CE 
Estimated time of completion: 1 hour

Credits Available

Southern Medical Association is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

Southern Medical Association designates this Journal CME/CE activity for a maximum of 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

AAPA: AAPA accepts certificates of participation for educational activities certified for AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™ from organizations accredited by ACCME or a recognized state medical society. 

AANPCP: The American Academy of Nurse Practitioners Certification Program (AANPCP) accepts AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™ from organizations accredited by the ACCME.

Healthcare Professionals: For information on applicability and acceptance of continuing education credit for this activity, please consult your professional licensing board.  All healthcare professionals who are not MDs or DOs will receive a certificate of participation.

Instructions for Participation and Credit

This activity is designed to be completed within the time designated; learners should claim only those credits that reflect the time actually spent in the activity. To successfully earn credit, participants must complete the activity online during the valid credit period noted, following these steps:

• Read the goals and objectives, accreditation information, and author disclosures.
• Login in below to study the educational content and references.
• Complete the attestation, post-test (if applicable), and evaluation.

Upon successful completion of these components, your certificate will be processed and emailed from customerservice@sma.org within approximately 1 hour. Credits will be archived for 6 years; at any point within this time period you may login to your account to print a duplicate copy of your certificate.

Disclosure of Relevant Financial Relationships

Southern Medical Association (SMA) requires instructors, planners, managers, and all other individuals who are in a position to control the content of this activity to disclose conflicts of interest (COI) with ineligible entities within the last 24 months of the development of this activity. All identified COIs are thoroughly vetted and mitigated prior to the release of the activity. SMA is committed to providing its learners with high quality activities and related materials that promote improvements or quality in healthcare and not a specific proprietary business interest of a commercial interest.

The following individuals, unless otherwise noted, have no relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Manuscript Author(s):
Christopher J. King, MD
David Gamble, MD
Gretchen Guiton, PhD
Paritosh Kaul, MD

Southern Medical Association/Southern Medical Journal Editorial Staff:
Steven T. Baldwin, MD, SMJ Editor-in-Chief
Jennifer S. Price, MA, Managing Editor
Anita McCabe, Copyeditor