Seven years ago, one of this group of Editors, Prof. Anette Wu, set out to put Medical School Anatomy Departments together across the globe to provide opportunities for students to professionally network internationally, explore academic life abroad and learn bioscience in different countries. Now with 21 members, this international collaborative venture has both given new opportunities to examine the perspective of the global medical student and has prompted questions about what is needed to navigate a global medical curriculum.
The internationalization of medical education is an inexorable consequence of an academic world united by a common dominant publication language and a steep rise of on-line Journals. However, rather than necessarily generating a homogeneity in educational experience, globalization has brought together a multitude of differently configured curricula. Even if medical training begins to trend towards similarity, it will always be nuanced by the cultural and historical identities.
Internationalization presents a persistent challenge, both in terms of the cultural competency required in negotiating diversity, but also a more general question about the way medical students understand how attitudes to the body, health, sickness, and mortality can be shaped by cultures. The expansion of the globalized medical campus pushes medical humanities and cultural studies into the heart of the training of new health professionals. The goal is to share the diversity and different aspects of cultural influences in medical education for both students and teachers. Moreover, this area is timely, new and under researched in our globalized world.
This Research Topic aims to address two main themes (but is not limited to):
• How should we train students to be sensitive to the cultural milieu and learn from different medical education contexts?
• What are the cultural factors that have shaped these traditions?
Seven years ago, one of this group of Editors, Prof. Anette Wu, set out to put Medical School Anatomy Departments together across the globe to provide opportunities for students to professionally network internationally, explore academic life abroad and learn bioscience in different countries. Now with 21 members, this international collaborative venture has both given new opportunities to examine the perspective of the global medical student and has prompted questions about what is needed to navigate a global medical curriculum.
The internationalization of medical education is an inexorable consequence of an academic world united by a common dominant publication language and a steep rise of on-line Journals. However, rather than necessarily generating a homogeneity in educational experience, globalization has brought together a multitude of differently configured curricula. Even if medical training begins to trend towards similarity, it will always be nuanced by the cultural and historical identities.
Internationalization presents a persistent challenge, both in terms of the cultural competency required in negotiating diversity, but also a more general question about the way medical students understand how attitudes to the body, health, sickness, and mortality can be shaped by cultures. The expansion of the globalized medical campus pushes medical humanities and cultural studies into the heart of the training of new health professionals. The goal is to share the diversity and different aspects of cultural influences in medical education for both students and teachers. Moreover, this area is timely, new and under researched in our globalized world.
This Research Topic aims to address two main themes (but is not limited to):
• How should we train students to be sensitive to the cultural milieu and learn from different medical education contexts?
• What are the cultural factors that have shaped these traditions?
