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In Nashville, patients were more respectful, but also engaged less in shared decision making, and took my word as authority without much questioning. For instance, I quickly learned that many parents stayed in the exam room throughout the entirety of their son or daughter’s visit, while in Los Angeles, we often ask parents of patients over the age of 13 to leave for a portion of the interview. Medicine in the south, and medicine in the west are surprisingly much different in practice. Previously, I had seen many diverse patients in my limited experience as a medical student in the LA County hospital system, but this was not the same. I worked alongside nurse practitioner students, and other medical students, to gain clinical experience in the exam room, listening to heart and lung sounds, checking for developmental milestones, talking about concussions and sports safety, and addressing childhood obesity. I worked in the pediatric department seeing patients that came in for anything from a well baby check up to STI screening. Every day MWCHC serves mostly low income African American and Hispanic patients. Immersion, in my own experience, is the best way to develop the skills needed to become a culturally competent physician, and this program helped me do just that. I traveled to Nashville, TN, during the summer in between my first and second year of medical school, a long way from Los Angeles, and worked in a Community Health Center - the Matthew Walker Comprehensive Health Center (MWCHC), as part of the General Electric and National Medical Fellowships Primary Care Leadership Program (PCLP). Certainly more education is needed, but the hands-on experience I had outside of my home institution was perhaps the most meaningful lesson in cultural competency.
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At the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, my current institution, there have been lectures and workshops on how to adequately address the cultural needs of patients. While working at Matthew Walker Comprehensive Health Center in Nashville, TN, Ramos focused on the needs of adolescent patients.Ĭultural competency has been an increasingly popular topic in medical school because of the diverse society in which we live and work. As a PCLP Scholar, Ramos had the opportunity to examine the challenges and rewards of working in primary care in Community Health Center. Our guest blogger today is Gianna Ramos, a GE-National Medical Fellowship Primary Care Leadership Program (PCLP) Scholar.