Understanding intercultural competence in intensive care medicine

Excerpt

Globalization is a multidimensional process characterized by increasing cross-border flows of people, goods, services, information, capital, and ideas. Globalization has fundamental consequences for health care. Globalizing cultural flow results in increasing interactions between participants of different cultures and religions. The wave of migration throughout Europe is an actual example of a potential “clash” of different beliefs, values, and attitudes among determinants of health and illness or of the interaction between patients or families and health workers. Caring for the critically ill often in the context of life-sustaining treatments is characterized by human crises, necessities of decision, conflicts, and informed discussions [1]. The unique characteristics and interpretations of a human being (personal values, views on dignity or autonomy) are often shaped by a religious and cultural basis, and in critical care these attitudes may lead to controversies among therapy goals. Originally, the term “culture” (from Latin cultura = agriculture, cultivation, manipulation) describes all of what mankind constitutes and generates (in contrast to the “unworked” nature). A modern definition is given by Astrid Erll [2]: “Culture is the social construction of the reality of a collective”. …