Embracing uncertainty as a path to competence: cultural safety, empathy, and alterity in clinical training.

Models of cultural competence training in psychiatry reflect particular contexts of practice. These contexts map the boundaries of professional expertise and identify the kinds of social differences that are framed as ‘cultural’ and that warrant explicit attention in health care. Understanding the social–historical and political–economic contexts of training programs and health care systems is essential to appreciate their explicit goals and structure as well as their implicit assumptions and blind spots. In this commentary, I provide some context to the paper by Cécile Rousseau and Jaswant Guzder on their Working with Culture seminar at McGill University. I outline some of the distinctive pedagogical values and orientations in their approach and consider the implications of their work for research, training, and clinical practice.