Residents' Attitude, Knowledge, and Perceived Preparedness Toward Caring for Patients from Diverse Sociocultural Backgrounds

Abstract

Purpose: Training residents to deliver care to increasingly diverse patients in the United States is an important strategy to help alleviate racial and ethnic disparities in health outcomes. Cross-cultural care training of residents continues to present challenges. This study sought to explore the associations among residents' cross-cultural attitudes, preparedness, and knowledge about disparities to better elucidate possible training needs.

Methods: This cross-sectional study used web-based questionnaires from 2013 to 2014. Eighty-four internal medicine residency programs with 954 residents across the United States participated. The main outcome was perceived preparedness to care for sociocultural diverse patients.

Key Results: Regression analysis showed attitude toward cross-cultural care (beta coefficient [β]=0.57, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.49–0.64, p<0.001) and report of serving a large number of racial/ethnic minorities (β=0.90, 95% CI: 0.56–1.24, p<0.001), and low-socioeconomic status patients (β=0.74, 95% CI: 0.37–1.10, p<0.001) were positively associated with preparedness. Knowledge of disparities was poor and did not differ significantly across postgraduate year (PGY)-1, PGY-2, and PGY-3 residents (mean scores: 56%, 58%, and 55%, respectively; p=0.08).

Conclusion: Residents' knowledge of health and healthcare disparities is poor and does not improve during training. Residents' preparedness to provide cross-cultural care is directly associated with their attitude toward cross-cultural care and their level of exposure to patients from diverse sociocultural backgrounds. Future studies should examine the role of residents' cross-cultural care-related attitudes on their ability to care for diverse patients.