The development and evaluation of a programme to teach cultural diversity to medical undergraduate students

Introduction This paper describes the design (of process and content), impl ementation and evaluation of a component of the Human Diversity Module deve loped to teach cultural diversity to undergraduate medical students. The ob jectives of the teaching were to enable students to gain factual and practi cal information about other cultures and also for them to examine their own attitudes. Method Students completed a questionnaire, designed in a previous study, at two stages; the first before the component on cultural diversity had been delivered and the second after the sessions on cultural diversity. The time interval between stages 1 and 2 was 1 week. The cultural diversity compone nt was developed using a range of sources. Results Out of 181 students, 140 (77.3%) completed the questionnaire at bot h stages. There were a number of statistically significant findings, which indicate that the teaching enabled the session objectives to be successfull y met. The findings include statistically significant changes that reflect more 'positive' attitudes about cultures coming together and about specific cultures. Conclusion The study indicates that attitudes changed over the period of te aching. There is, however, scope for further development of measures to ena ble attitudinal shifts to be evaluated.