• book review,  opinion,  readings,  religion,  spiritual care

    Notes on “Midrash and Medicine. Healing Body and Soul in the Jewish Interpretive tradition”

    The book is a collection of essays and articles that present the views of some of the most sensitive people to the ideas of jewish cultural tradition of midrash within the healthcare settings. The book is divided into themes, within each of them two different people present their perspective views on the given subject. These are not always the opposite views, I would rather call them complementary of each other. For example, in the first pair essays exploring the use of metaphors in the healing process both Rabbi Simka Y. Weintraub and Stuart Schoffman describe the use of metaphors in understanding of one’s illness and in accessing the healings. While…

  • articles,  cultural competency,  healthcare,  readings

    Notes on the article by by Patricia J. Kelly, PhD et al. “Exploring the Theoretical Framework of Cultural Competency Training”

    The article explores the theoretical frameworks of cultural competency training for Physician Assistants. It discusses the importance of such training, the main theories of health care cultural competency, and a brief history of its implementation. They propose shifting the view of cultural competency training from being one of the additional topics in the curriculum of medical students to being one of the foundation courses.  The authors explain that teaching cultural norms and exposing the students to cultural diversity will not train the students how to appropriately elicit cultural information from patients. They point out that such authors as Shapiro, Lie, Gutierrez, and Zhung have discovered that medical students “tend to…