Health is a Cultural Concept Patients Ethnicity, Spiritual Beliefs and Language

Integrative Intercultural Communication Paper
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Integrative Intercultural Communication Paper
Global migration and socioeconomic changes have increased the number of hospitalized patients from various backgrounds. Intercultural healthcare requires clinicians to communicate effectively with patients from diverse cultures so as to provide optimal care. Culturally sensitive communication in the healthcare setting demonstrates acknowledgement and respect for patients’ values, attitudes, and beliefs. One effective strategy for communicating with cultural sensitivity in this setting is active listening. Active listening is an interpersonal communication skill that can promote mutual understanding and trust as well as convey empathy in cross-cultural healthcare settings. Active listening entails careful listening of the speaker’s content, feeling, and intent. It also includes expressing interest in the speaker and using non-verbal cues such as body movement, posture, eye contact, and facial expressions to express involvement. The active listener demonstrates his or her complete attention through attentive silence, minimum verbal encouragement, and logically summarizing the speaker’s words all while paying attention to non-verbal behaviors that reveal what is not being said.
Cultural variation has often been cited as a challenge in developing effective and satisfying doctor-patient relationships. Some of the reasons for culture-related interpersonal difficulties in the healthcare sector include cultural differences in explanatory health and illness models, varying cultural values, perceptual biases and racism, cultural dissimilarities in patients’ proclivities for doctor-patient relationships, as well as linguistic barriers CITATION Sch07 \l 1033 (Schouten & Meeuwesen, 2007). Many doctors feel incompetent to communicate and provide care for patients from different cultures and often behave in a less effective manner when relating with them. Ethnic minority patients also tend to be less assertive or expressive when dealing with doctors. When effective communication between clinicians and patients is lacking, both parties develop negative attitudes towards each other and patient satisfaction as well as clinical outcomes plummets.
Health is a cultural concept and patients’ ethnicity, spiritual beliefs, language, and upbringing typically frames and shapes how they perceive health and illness. Doctor-patient relationships are often hampered by intercultural differences in how illness and pain are expressed, the causes of diseases, recommended health promotion activities, how patients seek help, patient-clinician interactions, among others. Some cultures prefer consulting allied health care providers and only seek a doctor when a medical condition becomes severe. Healthcare professionals may be annoyed by the delay and the tendency of some patients to first consult relatives about a treatment option, especially if the patient is falling behind in care plans. Some patients employ stoicism in the face of illness and pain and may not openly exp...