Tight and loose culture in medical education.

Received: June 9, 2022 • Revised: July 25, 2022 • Accepted: July 27, 2022 Corresponding Author: Young-Mee Lee (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4685-9465) Department of Medical Education, Korea University College of Medicine, 73 Goryeodae-ro, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 02841, Korea Tel: +82.2.2286.1098 email: ymleehj@korea.ac.kr Korean J Med Educ 2022 Sep; 34(3): 239-241 https://doi.org/10.3946/kjme.2022.234 eISSN: 2005-7288 C The Korean Society of Medical Education. All rights reserved. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Intercultural competence is the ability to function effectively across cultures, to act appropriately and to communicate and work with people from different cultural backgrounds [1], a prerequisite for effective international collaboration. A deeper understanding of the motivations behind observed behavior fosters the ability to address differences in communication more sensitively. As medical students from Germany undertaking clinical rotations in South Korea, we initially struggled to adapt to the new learning environment. We found that our behaviors and norms learned in Germany were at odds with the apparent expectations of students in Korea.