Getting Up to Speed on Culture Differences is a Click Away

A Middle Eastern couple comes into your facility and you notice that the husband makes all the decisions for the wife - who sits silently and never makes eye contact with you. You suspect the worst.

A Chinese woman refuses to go into a hospital room you've prepared for her - room 444. Although she was quiet just moments ago, she screams and fights to go in a different direction. You suspect a nervous breakdown.

In both of these situations, your cultural framework as an American healthcare professional will not serve you well. The challenges? Different cultural assumptions about health, healthcare, and the role of women in managing their own care.

Unless we understand our own cultural framework, it's often difficult for us to understand how other cultures approach healthcare, and similarly, the pitfalls they encounter when they seek care in an American environment that may be radically different from their own.

If you read or studied about other cultures long enough, or interacted with enough patients from a specific background, you just might learn a little bit about the different beliefs and assumptions other cultures bring to the healthcare environment. For example, you might learn that the middle eastern couple is behaving in a typical fashion for their culture - that it is customary for the man to make decisions for the wife and that it is expected by both the husband and the wife that he do so. You might also learn that some Chinese individuals are very suspicious and that the number 4, something like our 13, is a bad omen and could be interpreted as a bad sign for their continued health. Therefore, the room 444, could be seen as a threat to their personal safety.

The challenge for a healthcare professional facing increasing diversity is this: How exactly do you go about learning all of these details for an unimaginable number of cultures and ethnicities? Even if you read books and asked patients, you might not fully understand or even get the answers to your questions.

But there's a new solution: Culture Vision, developed by Cook Ross - a corporate consulting and training-services firm - engaged in a 12-year research process that consisted of gathering information on ethnic beliefs and approaches to health care.

Their subscriber-based Web site www.crculturevision.com lists questions healthcare professionals can ask their patients and acknowledges that while healthcare is a universal concept, different cultures vary in the ways in which health and illness are perceived and how care is given. By accessing the Culture Vision resource, doctors can better understand their unique patients needs, deliver quality care, and enhance treatment outcomes.