Rovers John, Becker Michelle, Andreski Michael, Gray Jeffrey
College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences, Drake University, Des Moines, IA 50311 USA.
Pharmacy Department, Mayo Clinic, 200 First St. SW, Rochester, MN 55905 USA.
Med Sci Educ. 2020 May 8;30(2):927-932. doi: 10.1007/s40670-020-00975-4. eCollection 2020 Jun.
Students in a wide variety of health professions are increasingly interested in volunteering on a short-term experience in global health (STEGH). The literature suggests that STEGHs pose a variety of potential risks and benefits, and may carry a significant cost to plan and provide. One potential mitigating factor for any risks and costs is that student participation on a STEGH may enhance their cultural competence. Since monies spent on STEGHs are fungible, and there may be other opportunities to improve students' cultural competence, the objectives of this study were to determine if participation on a STEGH increased students' cultural competence and if so, what the cost for any such increase was. In this study, 20 students who participated on a 1-week STEGH to the Dominican Republic completed the Inventory for Assessing the Process of Cultural Competence Among Health Care Professionals - Student Version (IAPCC-SV) before and after the STEGH. The costs for all students and 7 supervising health professionals to volunteer for the STEGH were calculated, and the size of any increase in cultural competence was determined. The cost was divided by the change in cultural competence to ascertain the cost of the change. Students showed a measureable increase on the IAPCC-SV overall and on the subscales of knowledge and skill. The cost of a 1% overall increase in students' cultural competence ranged from $287 to $401. These results may allow schools offering STEGHs to determine if their offerings are cost-effective or not.
众多健康专业的学生对参与全球健康短期体验志愿服务（STEGH）越来越感兴趣。文献表明，STEGH存在各种潜在风险和益处，且规划和提供此类服务可能会带来巨大成本。对于任何风险和成本而言，一个潜在的缓解因素是学生参与STEGH可能会提高他们的文化能力。由于花在STEGH上的资金是可替代的，而且可能有其他提高学生文化能力的机会，因此本研究的目的是确定参与STEGH是否能提高学生的文化能力，如果能提高，那么这种提高的成本是多少。在本研究中，20名参与了为期1周前往多米尼加共和国的STEGH的学生在服务前后完成了《医疗保健专业人员文化能力评估过程量表 - 学生版》（IAPCC - SV）。计算了所有学生以及7名监督健康专业人员参与STEGH志愿服务的成本，并确定了文化能力提高的幅度。用成本除以文化能力的变化量来确定变化的成本。学生在IAPCC - SV总体量表以及知识和技能子量表上都有可测量的提高。学生文化能力总体提高1%的成本在287美元至401美元之间。这些结果可能有助于提供STEGH的学校确定其项目是否具有成本效益。
