Transkulturell vård : En litteraturstudie utifrån patientens perspektiv

Background: Transcultural care implies care where the healthcare staff's cultural background differs from their patients by languages, religions, values and customs. Aim: To describe patients’ experiences of transcultural care. Method: This study was based upon the literature study, where twelve scientific articles were analyzed and subsequently presented in synthetized form. Results: Two themes which contained four sub themes were identified. The first theme was the handling of transcultural communication, which featured importance of language and encounter. The second theme was the handling of transcultural healthcare staff, where healthcare staff’s knowledge and background were mentioned. Conclusion: Language barriers and prejudice in transcultural healthcare can lead to misunderstandings, discrimination, inferior experiences of healthcare and lack in patients’ abilities to participate in healthcare process or experience of feeling ignored. Situations in which the healthcare staff’s cultural knowledge was insufficient could lead to discrimination towards the patients. Cultural training could counteract by improving cultural competence among healthcare staff. It’s important to acknowledge that patients’ prejudices and demands on healthcare adjustments could lead to discrimination against healthcare staff in transcultural care. This puts the healthcare staff in a dilemma, considering they must choose between the wellbeing of the staff or the patients