Globalisation has led to increasing diversity worldwide. The rapid rise in the number of international migrants over the last 15 years has been unprecedented and currently accounts for more than 10% of the European and 16% of the Norwegian populations. Most countries in Europe attempt to provide equitable health care services to their citizens regardless of their ethnicity, religion, country of origin and other characteristics.1 Still, a large body of literature describes challenges in providing healthcare for multicultural populations for doctors and other health care professionals.2,3 Furthermore, European health professionals are not at ease providing adequate health care in multicultural societies and in many countries they are still to receive systematic training to tackle this new and complex situation.4 Intercultural challenges are often attributed to the immigrant patients alone. However, the responsibility of health professionals in initiating, maintaining or inadequately tackling these challenges cannot be ignored. Although international recommendations to improve cross-cultural care exist,5 health professionals still perform differently in diagnostic procedures undertaken,6,7 number of consultations needed for referral to secondary care,8,9 specificity of diagnoses provided or treatments given10,11 for immigrant patients compared to non-immigrants. Furthermore, immigrants from low and middle-income countries in Europe seem to be less satisfied with health care services than the majority population.12,13 The so-called refuge-crises in 2015 actualised the necessity of dealing with intercultural consultations as a part of everyday work for healthcare professionals. Not surprisingly the authors have frequently been contacted to lecture about migration and health for different audiences. This demand responds to self-perception of lack of knowledge, skills or competencies necessary to give equitable health care to a growing number of immigrant patients.14,15 This paper aims to present and argue the need for a profound change in the healthcare curricula by describing our observations and experiences within medical education. Teaching undergraduate students We will first describe the situation of undergraduate medical students at the end of their education. At the beginning of our lessons, we often explore their experiences and knowledge to ensure that our teaching builds from their current state. Typical questions are: · What health care entitlements can immigrants and refugees receive at the different stages of their life in Norway? · Are there specific risk factors or diseases to be kept in mind, in consultations with patients of migrant origin? · Do we talk about culture with patients? Should we talk about culture at all? How to have effective consultations with translators? · Should we culturally adapt healthcare interventions for specific groups or choose a diversity-sensitive approach that accommodates migrants? As per our observations, few students can answer these or similar questions despite their clinical encounters with patients with immigrant background through their clinical rotations during several semesters. Furthermore, they can seldom refer to senior clinicians who have been good role models for cross-cultural consultations. Moreover, the simple exercise of describing one’s own ethnic and cultural background is often an eye-opener for many students and practitioners. It makes them realise that it is far too easy to describe another persons’ background by the different colour of their skin, their different clothes or because they speak with an accent. It is relatively easy for immigrant students or for Norwegians, who are proud of their regions and local dialects, to describe themselves if they have moved within the country, but the task is far more challenging for those who have never moved out of these local communities.