The Power of Sociocultural Humility in Medical Training
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March 27, 2025
How can medical trainees build deeper trust with patients from all walks of life? At Columbia University, internal medicine residents are finding answers through sociocultural humility – an approach that emphasizes self-reflection and discovery to understand oneself and then others in order to build honest and trustworthy relationships.
Through partnerships with Food FARMcia program, HELP USA, and Bowery Mission Shelter, residents step outside hospital walls to provide health education at community-based organizations across New York City. These opportunities provide experience working with diverse populations and expose residents to perspectives that they might not encounter in clinical settings.
The program, led by Dr. Maria Hamm de Miguel, is funded through the ABIM Foundation’s Building Trust through DEI and Diagnostic Excellence in Internal Medicine Training grant program.
In focus groups, residents participated in structured interviews on how they benefited from the service-learning experience, using a transformative-learning model with the following stages of change:
- Contextual Border Crossing – Leaving the traditional medical setting to engage with the community
- Dissonance – Encountering unexpected aspects of life outside of a hospital setting
- Personalizing – Feeling the emotional effects of interactions in the community
- Processing – Gaining a deeper understanding of the social determinants of health
- Connecting – Strengthening empathy and clinical skills through real-world engagement
The impact of the program is felt on both sides. Residents gain valuable lessons in trust and humility and the community-based organizations benefit from needed health education. “The directors of the shelters have consistently commented on how valuable and well-received these sessions are,” said Dr. de Miguel.
By bridging the gap between medicine and the community, this initiative reinforces an essential lesson: trust in health care is built through understanding, shared experiences, and meaningful relationships.
