Immigrants in emergency care: Swedish health care staff's experiences

Abstract

During the past few decades Sweden has developed into a multicultural society. The proportion of patients with different cultural backgrounds increases, which naturally makes new demands on health care staff. To identify whether staff in somatic and psychiatric emergency care experienced problems in the care of migrants, and if so to compare these. The study design was explorative. Focus group interviews of 22 women and 13 men working as nurses and assistant nurses at an emergency ward, an ambulance service and a psychiatric intensive care unit were held. The results showed that the main problems experienced in all wards were difficulties related to caring for asylum-seeking refugees. Some dissimilarities were revealed: unexpected behaviours in migrants related to cultural differences described by staff working in the emergency ward; migrants' refusal to eat and drink and their inactive behaviour in the psychiatric ward; and a lot of non-emergency runs by the ambulance staff because of language barriers between the emergency services centre and migrants. The main problems experienced by the health care staff were situations in which they were confronted with the need to care for asylum-seeking refugees. These emphasize the importance of support from organizational structures and national policies to develop models for caring for asylum-seeking refugees. Simple routines and facilities to communicate with foreign-language-speaking migrants need to be developed. Health care staff need a deeper understanding of individual needs in the light of migrational and cultural background.