Teaching racial understanding to medical students.

ABSTRACT

Aim: To facilitate and promote racial understanding among medical students as part of their training Methodology: A descriptive study comprising of opinions of students and foster parents about the home stay programme and its influence on racial understanding. Results and Discussion: 229 medical students and 47 foster parents participated to state their opinions regarding living with other races, the home stay programme and racial understanding. Results showed a positive change post home stay among the students and foster parents on these three domains. There was also a significant change in the mean scores of the students’ perception about the villagers and their own skills and ability post home stay. Majority of the foster parents experienced moderate improvement of their understanding of the different races and their cultures. Conclusions: The home stay programme has made a positive change in the perception of the participants on racial understanding. It is particularly of importance because the students are in training for an important profession; that of a medical doctor.