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 sites CHA mission: To deliver excellence in public sector health care Serve, in particular, the medically indigent, refugee, immigrant and low income population Severe and persistent forms of mental illness Harvard teaching hospital but funded through a mix of payers

Psychiatry is the largest department Training programs in adult & child psychiatry, nursing, social work and psychology Division of Psychology APA-approved internship program (8), postdoctoral fellowship (14) & practicum trainees (18)

Approximately 35 core faculty & 200 affiliated supervisors Large, distributed system Working under pressured conditions High productivity expectations Dearth of resources (especially time)

Faculty and institution understand themselves to stand for the value of inclusive practice Diverse 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

Challenges How 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 psychotherapy Senior 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

Developing a mission statement To develop our ability to teach and supervise psychologists-in-training To enhance our ability to collaborate as colleagues To 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 seminars Desire 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 choosing Each facilitator was asked to choose exercises, readings, etc. and to lead the session All facilitators subsequently wrote a teaching note Collated these notes into an internal curriculum

Seminar Topics Engaging with Identity-Bases Experience: Three “Things” Exercise Personal Reactions to Awareness of Difference: Early Memories of Race Acculturation: A Discussion of Multiple Culture Contact and Change Use of Mental Health Testing in Eugenics, Immigration and Race Considering Transgender Issues in Training and Supervision

Goals accomplished Faculty ownership of their own learning Draw on and develop expertise End product included a curriculum package each could use as s/he wished