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The need for cross-cultural training (CCT) increases as physicians encounter more culturally diverse patients. However, most medical schools relegate this topic to non-clinical years, hindering skills development. Some residency programs have successfully addressed this deficit by teaching cross-cultural communication skills in a teaching objective structured clinical examination (tOSCE) context. The authors developed and evaluated a CCT workshop designed to teach cross-cultural communication skills to third-year medical students using a tOSCE approach. A 1 and 1/2-day workshop incorporating didactic, group discussion and tOSCE components taught medical students cross-cultural awareness, interviewing skills, working with an interpreter, attention to complementary treatments, and consideration of culture in treatment and prevention. Six standardized patient cases introduced various clinical scenarios and the practical and ethical aspects of cross-cultural care. Student evaluation of the workshop was positive concerning educational value, skills advancement and pertinence to their clinical activities. Survey of students before and after the workshop demonstrated improvement in students' abilities to assess the culture and health beliefs of patients and negotiate issues regarding treatment. CCT in the context of medical student clinical training can be carried out effectively and efficiently using a dedicated multi-modal workshop including standardized patients.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.Annual Reviews is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Annual Review of Anthropology.PALGI & ABRAMOVITCH Powdermaker (167) writes about her field experience in Lesu " 'How can you take notes in the midst of human sorrow? Have you no feelings for the mourners?' I had a quick vision of a stranger walking into the living room of my Baltimore home at the time of a death. The notebook went back into my pocket. But I continued 'Are you not an anthropologist? . .. A knowledge of these rites is absolutely essential! I took the notebook out and wrote what was happening ...The Lesu people understood...." pp. 84-85.Thus, the works of the stout-hearted in the profession are reviewed or mentioned in this article which is the first to appear on the subject of death in the Annual Review of Anthropology. (Psychology and sociology, too, are latecomers in evaluating the state of their arts with regard to death studies; nevertheless they preceded the anthropologists in publishing on death in the 1977 Annual Review of Psychology (63) and in the 1983 Annual Review of Sociology.) However, already by the late nineteenth century anthropologists were paying detailed attention to belief in spiritual beings associated with life after death and attitudes to the corpse.Interesting ethnographic material was collected. The intellectual search was for the origin of religion and man's beliefs about his posthumus fate. From the 1960s onward, anthropologists stressed the socially restorative functions of funeral rites and the significance of the symbolism of death-related behavior as a cultural expression of the value system. Another important motif is the recognition and analysis of the ambivalence of the living toward the dead, involving the theme of transition and the concept of liminality.The pattern followed for most review articles is to collect the literature dealing with the research problems, summarize critically their findings, with the organization growing out naturally from the research topics. On the anthropology of death, however, there seemed to be little consensus on what are the seminal questions which anthropologists should ask; thus the range of data does not render itself easily for comparison. Furthermore, certain themes do not fit neatly into one category but rather fit into many places. Finally, a loose chronological organization was adopted featuring outstanding works at different periods of time. Works representing specific schools of thought have been grouped together wherever possible. Because a number of aspects of death have not as yet been studied by anthropologists, reference is made freely to work done in other disciplines, notably by sociologists, psych...

Medical students studying abroad have to adapt to a new cultural environment in addition to the usual stresses of medical school. This study explored the perceived stress and coping ability of students of the New York State/American Programme, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, who study medicine in Israel but are expected to return to America to practice. Students were surveyed using the Ways of Coping Checklist (WCCL), Appraisal Dimension Scale (ADS) and two instruments specifically designed for the study. The results supported the view that students having difficulty adapting to their new cultural environment also have difficulty at medical school. This pattern is a negative spiral in which anxiety and depression impair cognitive performance, which leads to academic difficulties and emotional distress. Improvements in student social support and primary prevention were implemented as a result of the study. Limitations of the study are discussed.

Folk veneration of saints (hagiolatry) plays a major role in the lives of many Moroccan Jews living in Israel and constitutes a basic ingredient of their distinctive ethnic identity. In this context, pilgrimages to the saint's tomb and visitational dreams, in which he appears in person or in some symbolic guise, are related phenomena through which the linkage to the saint is maintained and his blessing is granted to his adherents. This paper is concerned with visitational dreams collected among Moroccan Jews in a major pilgrimage center in northern Israel. An attempt is made to show how personal concerns of the dreamers are mediated through the culturally shared idiom of the saint. We discuss the basic structure of visitational dreams, the major life problems conveyed by them (drawing on illustrations from the dream collection), their therapeutic qualities and their significance in the framework of the pilgrimage to the saint's sanctuary.