Objectives. Cross-cultural mental health researchers often analyze patient explanatory models of illness to optimize service provision. The Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI) is a cross-cultural assessment tool released in May 2013 with DSM-5 to revise shortcomings from the DSM-IV Outline for Cultural Formulation (OCF). The CFI field trial took place in 6 countries, 14 sites, and with 321 patients to explore its feasibility, acceptability, and clinical utility with patients and clinicians. We sought to analyze if and how CFI feasibility, acceptability, and clinical utility were related to patient–clinician communication. Design. We report data from the New York site which enrolled 7 clinicians and 32 patients in 32 patient–clinician dyads. We undertook a data analysis independent of the parent field trial by conducting content analyses of debriefing interviews with all participants (n = 64) based on codebooks derived from frameworks for medical communication and implementation outcomes. Three coders created codebooks, coded independently, established inter-rater coding reliability, and analyzed if the CFI affects medical communication with respect to feasibility, acceptability, and clinical utility. Results. Despite racial, ethnical, cultural, and professional differences within our group of patients and clinicians, we found that promoting satisfaction through the interview, eliciting data, eliciting the patient's perspective, and perceiving data at multiple levels were common codes that explained how the CFI affected medical communication. We also found that all but two codes fell under the implementation outcome of clinical utility, two fell under acceptability, and none fell under feasibility. Conclusion. Our study offers new directions for research on how a cultural interview affects patient–clinician communication. Future research can analyze how the CFI and other cultural interviews impact medical communication in clinical settings with subsequent effects on outcomes such as medication adherence, appointment retention, and health condition.

While social science research has demonstrated the importance of culture in shaping psychiatric illness, clinical methods for assessing the cultural dimensions of illness have not been adopted as part of routine care. Reasons for limited integration include the impression that attention to culture requires specialized skills, is only relevant to a subset of patients from unfamiliar backgrounds, and takes too much time to be useful. The DSM-5 Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI), published in 2013, was developed to provide a simplified approach to collecting information needed for cultural assessment. It offers a 16-question interview protocol that has been field tested at sites around the world. However, little is known about how CFI implementation has affected training, health services, and clinical outcomes. This article offers a comprehensive narrative review that synthesizes peer-reviewed, published studies on CFI use. A total of 25 studies were identified, with sample sizes ranging from 1 to 460 participants. In all pilot CFI studies 960 unique subjects were enrolled, and in final CFI studies 739 were enrolled. Studies focused on how the CFI affects clinical practice; explored the CFI through research paradigms in medical communication, implementation science, and family psychiatry; and examined clinician training. In most studies, patients and clinicians reported that using the CFI improved clinical rapport. This evidence base offers an opportunity to consider implications for training, research, and clinical practice and to identify crucial areas for further research.