Clinician–Patient Communication: Intercultural

Abstract

Intercultural clinician–patient encounters pose unique challenges for delivering good quality healthcare communication, which contributes to ongoing health inequalities for ethnic minority and migrant patients. To mitigate these challenges, a good grasp of relevant antecedents, processes, and outcomes of intercultural clinician–patient communication is needed. Among the antecedents known to be related to communication difficulties are cultural differences in cognitions around illness and health as well as cultural differences in values. In addition, for ethnic minority and migrant patients without sufficient proficiency in a country's dominant language, the language barrier poses a significant threat to access to healthcare and quality of healthcare communication. These communication difficulties subsequently result in a host of negative outcomes, including diminished patient satisfaction, mutual understanding, and adherence to treatment plans. Health communication scholars have researched how several communication strategies impact the intercultural clinician–patient communication process and its outcomes. In particular, eHealth and mHealth interventions offer unique possibilities to tailor both content and format of health communication to the needs of individual patients, thereby adopting a culturally sensitive communication approach in which both culture‐specific needs and individual differences within cultural groups are acknowledged.