Cultural humility is a lifelong process of self-reflection and self-critique whereby the individual not only learns about another's culture, but one starts with an examination of her/his own beliefs and cultural identities, (8). Cultural humility means that we each recognize our experience as individual and that we have different lived experiences than our patients. Still, we treat each other with empathy, respect, and an aptitude to learn from one another. Clinicians and staff meet patients “where they are” without judgement or pathologizing them.
Within a model of cultural humility, healthcare providers accept that:
· Each of us has innate biases and individual, learned experience
· In learning from each other, we will at times be uncomfortable
· That in the process of learning, we may be wrong, make mistakes, or come up short
· Although we may not all be formally trained, we should educate ourselves on the
importance of implicit bias and personal differences of our patients
And we use our discomfort not as an excuse to not do the work, but as a reason to continue learning.
About the author:
Alyssa J. Ahern is a fourth-year medical student at UNE COM. She is passionate about diverse, inclusive, and equitable medicine delivered compassionately. She also considers advocacy and allyship as pillars of medicine. As an OMS-I, Alyssa participated in the American Medical Association’s Sexual Health Leadership Course and was a student lecturer/facilitator for her class’s OCS Inclusive Sexual Health History lecture. In her second year, she co-founded UNE COM’s Compassion Training Workshop with fellow OMS-III, Shealagh Clarke, and later developed and directed UNE’s first Social Determinants of Health Month, an initiative for accessible, diverse, inclusive, and equitable medicine.
In 2021, she was awarded UNE COM’s Pettapiece Fellowship for her study entitled Transgender and Gender Diverse (TGD) Specific Content in Emergency Medicine: A Literature Review Analysis, a project that would later earn her 1st place in Original Student Research at the 2022 MOA Virtual Midwinter Symposium. Alyssa was inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society in 2021. Currently, she is studying at the Lakes Region clinical campus in Laconia, NH, and hopes to pursue a career in Internal Medicine.