Intercultural skills in primary health care: a challenge for higher education in contexts of cultural diversity

Abstract

Contemporary society is marked by four interconnected phenomena leading to the need to develop intercultural skills in the framework of primary care: migratory movements, different ethnic groups, cultural diversity, and social and cultural construction of the Western medical system. The multicultural reality of the contexts in which primary care is practiced requires integrative theoretical models that allow understanding this reality in order to provide timely, high-quality care that is pertinent to the respective communities, considering the existing diversity. It is thus necessary to implement and teach intercultural skills for health care teams and students, allowing to sustain such care from a holistic perspective. Educational interventions in intercultural skills should be conducted from a comprehensive, integrative, and cross-disciplinary perspective that allows intervening in attitudes, feelings, social behaviors, and cultural agendas at the individual, institutional, and social levels. The current essay aims to reflect on the importance of learning and developing such skills in primary care teams, meanwhile producing a list of strategies that allow acquiring these skills in basic training, with the understanding that skills are the result of experiences and can change during the process.