Approaches to diversity in family medicine: "I have always tried to be colour blind".

Objective: To explore family physicians' perceptions of and experiences with patient diversity, including differences in sex, race, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation, and abilities or disabilities.

Design: Semistructured, in-depth, qualitative interviews. SETTING Halifax metropolitan region, Nova Scotia.

Measures of cultural competence: examining hidden assumptions.

Purpose: The authors critically examined the quantitative measures of cultural competence most commonly used in medicine and in the health professions, to identify underlying assumptions about what constitutes competent practice across social and cultural diversity.

Method: A systematic review of approximately 20 years of literature listed in PubMed, the Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Social Services Abstracts, and the Educational Resources Information Center identified the most frequently used cultural competence measures, which were then thematically analyzed following a structured analytic guide.

Results: Fifty-four instruments were identified; the 10 most widely used were analyzed closely, identifying six prominent assumptions embedded in the measures.