The Effectiveness of the experienced curriculum in developing of students’ cultural competency in Shiraz University of Medical Sciences

Context and goals: cultural competence is considered as the main and basic component of professionalism and has unique and special place in the medical sciences due to the cultural diversity of its clients. The goal of this research was surveying of the effectiveness of the experienced curriculum in developing of students’ cultural competency in Shiraz University of Medical Sciences.  Methods:  The research method used was descriptive - correlational. The population of this research consisted of all students of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. Among them, 366 participants were selected by stratified random sampling method based on the faculty. The research tools consisted of the experienced curriculum effectiveness questionnaire of Mohammadi and Moltaji (1391) and a researcher-made cultural competency questionnaire, which used after evaluating the validity and reliability. Findings: 1- The quality of the curriculum experienced is above Mean and is below the optimal level. 2- Cultural competency in the three dimensions of cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, and cultural skill is higher than the Mean and the cultural encounters dimension is below the Mean criterion and all dimensions of cultural competency are lower than the desired level. 3- There is a significant relationship between experienced curriculum and cultural competency (awareness, knowledge, skill). 4- Elements of experienced curriculum (content, duty, quality and goals) are significant and evaluation is non-significant predictor for cultural competency.  Result: According to the results, it would be possible to create a situation for students to achieve the highest level of cultural awareness, cultural knowledge and cultural skill with designing a high quality curriculum in any dimension and items and improving students’ cultural exposure performance by providing appropriate and group assignments.