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Table 3 An example of the inquiry-guided reflection

From: Cultivating cultural awareness among medical educators by integrating cultural anthropology in faculty development: an action research study

Presentation by Dr. A

“At the hospital where I did my residency, I formed a journal club. Now I am working at a community-based hospital that provides acute care. As the members of our department need to treat all patients with gastroenterological problems, we struggle to find the time to either study or engage in academic activities on our own time. For these reasons, we decided to start the journal club to update our medical knowledge. After we started it, however, we encountered several unexpected issues. For example, each participant presented in their way, so the quality of presentations varied. Also, gradually the journal club meetings began to be postponed due to members’ busy schedules and eventually ceased altogether. Based on this experience, I think we should have created general rules for the presentation style. As we were trained in different hospitals during our residency, our experiences at the journal clubs were different. We each tended to conduct the journal club as we did in our residency, and we could not reasonably modify the journal club’s style in our hospital.”

Dialogue between Dr. A and an anthropologist

Anthropologist: “Did you have a similar journal club in your residency?”

Dr. A: “In the hospital where I trained, the journal club had an established format for presentation. But I was a resident at that time, so I had no experience managing a journal club.”

Anthropologist: “I need to understand more about the journal club. Where was the venue? How long did the meetings last?”

Dr. A: “We held the journal club meetings in a conference room for 30 min.”

Anthropologist: “How did you proceed?”

Dr. A: “A person in charge read the entire journal and summarized it. They shared this summary and answered questions from other participants.”

Anthropologist: “I see. You mentioned that each member presented in different ways.”

Dr. A: “Yes, some of them brought photocopies of the journal while others created presentation slides. Their styles lacked coherence.”

Anthropologist: “Do you think it matters?”

Dr. A: “Well, it is a difficult question. I do not think lacking coherence in presentation style really matters. But I think there was inconsistency in the quality of presentations among members, which does matter.”

Anthropologist: “Hmm. Could you tell me more about the institution you currently work at?”

Dr. A: “The hospital is located in a prefectural capital and has 400 beds. We accept many emergency cases every day.”

Anthropologist: “What kind of physicians are in your department?”

Dr. A: “In our department, I am at the mid-level. There are ten physicians with more experience than me and six physicians who are younger than me.”

Anthropologist: “How many times did the journal club meet?”

Dr. A: “About ten times.”

Anthropologist: “What were the participants’ reactions toward the journal club?”

Dr. A: “Not so bad, and not so good.”

Anthropologist: “You mentioned that you could not reasonably modify the journal club in your hospital situation. Please tell me more about this situation.”

Dr. A: “In our hospital, emergency cases came unexpectedly, so we could not have a regular meeting in the late afternoon…”