After reading the feedback on my research proposal, I agree that I need to narrow my focus. I’m interested in understanding what type of training medical professionals receive in regard to cultural competency. After considering the spatial limits of my research, I’ve determined that I would like to examine VCU as a medical education provider to start. I’m interested in looking at the policies and curricula surrounding cultural competency at VCU in the last 3 years. I know we discussed biting off a small segment but I think it would be interesting to cross examine two different programs in Virginia like VCU and UVA (potentially).
Research questions:
-What policies are in place regarding cultural competency training?
– Are there courses within the curricula that include cultural competency?
-What do these courses consist of?
– Do medical professionals have to complete cultural competency training more than once?
– What benefits do cultural competency courses provide?
Potential question:
-How do these policies or courses compare across different medical education providers?
Audience:
My audience will be medical education providers and the general public/ minority communities. I hope to provide some insight on areas where the medical educators can improve and how this may impact medical distrust within minority communities.
“So what?”:
My research from this summer showed me the strides that the Commonwealth’s education system is taking to adequately train their educators to be culturally responsive. I was able to see the possibilities and positive impact that this can have on the youth of the commonwealth. I thought, if we can change policies on one education front, why can’t we apply the same changes to another education front (medical education)? I think these courses are a necessity in medical training and should be made a top priority. These courses can potentially help ease medical distrust and provide a more positive experience with healthcare for minority communities.
I really appreciate the narrowing work you’ve done here. And I don’t necessarily think you have too many questions here (although you might). Instead, I think you may have many aspects of a single question. Understanding that a single question needs responses to “sub-questions” is important. In your case, I believe the question you’re focused on is something like “Do policies and courses relating to cultural competencies improve medical care?” or “To what extent to policies…. improve care?” Unless there’s clear and distinct literature that demonstrates without question that cultural competency frameworks in medical care improve that care, then you’ll need to make that case. The problem with this is that “improving care” is a terribly difficult thing to measure. For that, you’ll need access to historical metrics like mortality rates and demographics among treated patients, and I’m not sure you’ll get access to that.
Another way of thinking about the project may be to start by asking the question about benefits, and then simply investigating, to the extent possible, the benefits of implementing cultural competencies in healthcare settings. In either case, the questions you’ve proposed aren’t likely to be your final questions, but they are clearly questions that will help you determine benefits of cultural competencies.