Engaging Colleagues:Developing a

Faculty Seminar on Multicultural Practice

Kimberlyn Leary, Ph.D., ABPP

Roadmap Present the methodology on developing a faculty seminar Describe goal

Assisting colleagues with differing levels of expertise to learn with and from one another

Developing specific seminars

Cambridge Health Alliance

3 hospitals and 23 neighborhood sitesCHA mission: To deliver excellence in public sector health care

Serve, in particular, the medically indigent, refugee, immigrant and low income populationSevere and persistent forms of mental illness

Harvard teaching hospital but funded through a mix of payers

Psychiatry is the largest departmentTraining programs in adult & child psychiatry, nursing, social work and psychologyDivision of Psychology

APA-approved internship program (8), postdoctoral fellowship (14) & practicum trainees (18)

Approximately 35 core faculty & 200 affiliated supervisorsLarge, distributed systemWorking under pressured conditionsHigh productivity expectationsDearth of resources (especially time)

Faculty and institution understand themselves to stand for the value of inclusive practiceDiverse community with cultural-linguistic specialty clinics, a large interpreter service and many community-based links

Ironically, in such a situation can be difficult for concerns about multicultural sensitivity and practice to be be raised…Problems, in fact, can sometimes prove a defensive reaction because the institution’s identity is challenged

ChallengesHow to engage faculty in a busy public sector facility working with limited resources?How to create a learning venue in the context of considerable variation in expertise?

e.g. younger faculty, recently graduated, with state of the art knowledge about culturally-sensitive practice, multi-cultural issues and cross-cultural psychotherapySenior faculty whose training did not include this focus

How to make it possible for faculty to examine extant practices and minimize identity threat?

Faculty seminar was scheduled into the regular staff meeting time

One time in the hospital schedule where the core faculty of Psychology come together

Pre-planning for this meeting over email

Developing a mission statement

To develop our ability to teach and supervise psychologists-in-trainingTo enhance our ability to collaborate as colleaguesTo examine how race, culture, class and other identity parameters affect our professional practice at Cambridge Health Alliance

To update our knowledge of the relevant literature and coordinate our efforts with work trainees are doing in their seminarsDesire for this seminar to have experiential component to minimize intellectualism and maximize awareness of our feelings and their impact on the work we do

Recruited faculty to chair individual sessions on topics of their own choosingEach facilitator was asked to choose exercises, readings, etc. and to lead the sessionAll facilitators subsequently wrote a teaching noteCollated these notes into an internal curriculum

Seminar TopicsEngaging with Identity-Bases Experience: Three “Things” ExercisePersonal Reactions to Awareness of Difference: Early Memories of RaceAcculturation: A Discussion of Multiple Culture Contact and ChangeUse of Mental Health Testing in Eugenics, Immigration and RaceConsidering Transgender Issues in Training and Supervision

Goals accomplished

Faculty ownership of their own learningDraw on and develop expertiseEnd product included a curriculum package each could use as s/he wished