Transcultural assistance and transcultural communication

Abstract

For some years now, the health care world has also been interested and influenced by issues related to immigration, integration, no integration, historical changes in our socio-anthropological field and cultural and linguistic differences; different worldviews and expectations, beliefs and non-evidence-based practices; prejudices and defense mechanisms for ethical and professional inability to care with patients with different cultures; scientific culture alongside a traditional and popular culture; little or no anthropological knowledge of many health professionals; improvised approaches to foreign patients, misunderstandings, tensions. The use of the cultural mediator is a very small part in the solution of the problem. Cross-cultural assistance represents the solution and it is a model, a discipline, a communication that allows an appropriate health care based on the cultural differences of the patients.