I have been a stranger in a strange land. Exodus 2:22
Radiology is often regarded as a highly technical field, in part because the equipment that radiologists rely on everyday is so sophisticated and expensive. So, too, the care of patients in radiology is closely tied to science, where new discoveries have spawned radically new ways of peering into the human body. But science and technology are not the whole story. An equally important and sometimes neglected dimension of patient care in radiology is culture—the language, beliefs, and customs that shape the understanding of everyone involved in health care. Even when science and technology are first-rate, patient care can suffer if this dimension is misunderstood or neglected.
Ironically, we spend hundreds and even thousands of hours educating medical students, residents, and fellows about medicine’s scientific and technical aspects, but little or no time on its cultural dimension. A radiology learner may become highly proficient at detecting lesions and offering differential diagnoses, but without an understanding of how to learn from, teach, and generally interact with patients and other health professionals, such abilities may amount to little. Great radiologists are not just image analyzers and differential diagnosis generators—they are also physicians, who need to be adept at understanding and making themselves understood by those they work with and care for.
One of the most effective means we know of cultivating such cultural understanding is travel, and in particular, international travel. When learners find themselves in a new place surrounded by new people who speak a different language and perhaps even worship a different god, they gain a deeper understanding of the significance of cultural, economic, and linguistic barriers in health care. They discover that there are different standards for health care and even different understandings of health and disease. And they gain exposure to forms of disease and injury that may be unknown to them in their home country.
To see more deeply into the importance of international experience for radiology learners, we turn to a specific culture that differs in important respects from the United States. Sudan, located in Northeast Africa, is the third largest nation on the continent and boasts a population of about 40 million people. Although Arabic is the most common language, Sudan is a former British colony, and English is very widely spoken as well, particularly among the more educated. Its per capita gross domestic product is $4500 (US: $53,000), of which it spends approximately 8.5% on health (US: 18%). The two most common causes of death are lower respiratory infections and diarrheal diseases (US: heart disease and cancer).
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<