Analysis of Student Definitions of Culture

The concepts of culture and cultural issues have become a focus for the delivery of health care services in multicultural societies. While much attention has been directed towards explorations of cultural issues in health care contexts, few studies have explored understandings of the concept of culture. In this paper, we explore definitions of culture offered by a group of 715 occupational therapy, diversional therapy, and physiotherapy students in Australia. A simple content analysis of the definitions suggests that student health professionals tend to use a totalist or materialist view of culture and often confound the concept of culture with race and ethnicity.