Teaching physiotherapy skills in culturally-diverse classes
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(Published version)
Date
2011
Authors
Bialocerkowski, A.
Wells, C.
Grimmer Somers, K.
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Journal article
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BMC Medical Education, 2011; 11(1, article no. 34):1-10
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Abstract
Background: Cultural competence, the ability to work in cross-cultural situations, has been acknowledged as a core skill for physiotherapists and other health professionals. Literature in this area has focused on the rationale for physiotherapists to provide culturally-competent care and the effectiveness of various educational strategies to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge about cultural competence by physiotherapists and physiotherapy students. However, there is a paucity of research on how students with different cultural needs, who are attending one university class, can be accommodated within a framework of learning core physiotherapy skills to achieve professional standards.
Results: This paper reports on steps which were taken to resolve the specific needs of a culturally-diverse body of first year physiotherapy students, and the impact this had on teaching in a new physiotherapy program located in Greater Western Sydney, Australia. Physiotherapy legislative, accreditation and registration requirements were considered in addition to anti-discrimination legislation and the four ethical principles of decision making.
Conclusions: Reflection on this issue and the steps taken to resolve it has resulted in the development of a generic framework which focuses on providing quality and equitable physiotherapy education opportunities to all students. This framework is generalizable to other health professions worldwide.
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Copyright 2011 Bialocerkowski et al; licensee BioMed Central. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)