Psychiatry Resident Training in Cultural Competence: An Educator’s Toolkit

Resident physicians training in psychiatry in the U.S. are required to master a body of knowledge related to cultural psychiatry; are expected to adopt attitudes that endorse the principles of cultural competence; and finally are expected to acquire specific cultural competence skills that facilitate working effectively with diverse patients. This article first provides an overview of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) competencies related to cultural competence, as well as the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s (AACAP) recommendations for the cultural competence training of child/adolescent fellows. Next, numerous print and electronic resources that can be used in cultural competence education in psychiatry are reviewed and discussed. Finally, we conclude by providing recommendations for psychiatry residency programs that we culled from model cultural competence curricula.