The development of clinical sensitivity to diversity and cultural competency is a hallmark feature of the NAAPTC internship. Diversity is understood by the NAAPTC to include all differences related to culture, ethnicity, race, class, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and physical condition, and it is an aspect of clinical work that permeates the learning environment at the internship.
The intern's exposure to a diverse client population, training cohort, and clinical staff faces interns with assumptions held about various cultures. This creates an opportunity and demand to address one's own biases and limitations in tolerating diversity as well as to learn and appreciate cultural and ethnic differences. In this environment, the interns' sensitivity to diversity is demonstrated in the overall context of their handling of their professional responsibilities. Clinical aspects of diversity are discussed in supervision, case conferences, and didactic seminars. In addition, interns have the possibility to utilize the experience and expertise of diverse training cohorts and staff who are not core training faculty. In this way, peers and staff act as cultural consultants to cases with particular diversity issues, and supervisors often encourage interns to seek consultation on those cases.
A structured part of the diversity training is the Cultural Competency Project requirement. The purpose of the Cultural Competency Project is to allow interns the opportunity to develop clinical sensitivity to diversity in an area of interest. In the beginning of the year, each intern identifies a cultural bias they believe may be affecting his/her clinical work: This is done during weekly group supervision with the help from the other interns and the Director of Training. They are then asked to consider how they want to go about testing that bias and what skills and knowledge they would like to attain as an outcome of their Cultural Competency Project. Based on that, interns choose an ethnic or cultural group in which they would like to immerse themselves and focus on some aspect of mental health in the context of this group. Except for unusual circumstances, it must be a culture or group foreign to their own. The resulting project is a clinical study that explores an intersection between relevant clinical and cultural/ social issues; it must be of sufficient scope and depth that six to nine months would be needed to complete it and that can be accomplished in the four hours a week allotted for it and dissertation work. For the list of Cultural Competency Projects conducted by the RAMS interns since 1997, please click here.
Dr. Alla Volovich supervises the cultural competency projects during her weekly group meetings with the interns; she also has the responsibility for securing resources that interns need in order to fulfill their learning goal. Staff clinicians are available to work with interns formally as mentors as well as informally to advise and support them in completing their goal. Interns present their projects to the entire staff at our Wednesday In-service Seminar, and they submit a written version of their presentation to be used as a resource for staff and future interns.