Diabetes Management. Intercultural Barriers (original) (raw)

2019, B.G. Ioan (Ed) Proceedings of The XIIIth National Conference on Bioethics with international participation ISBN 978-88-85813-58-8

In working with diverse populations, health practitioners, academics, and researchers often view patients' culture as a barrier to diabetes care. Cultural characteristics such as values, beliefs, customs, and family patterns may be used as clues, as a piece of the total information gathered regarding patients with diabetes. Thus, the practitioners, academics, and researchers can select appropriate levels of intensity of cultural interventions, adapt diabetes patient education approaches and materials, and develop community-based programs. This paper aims to reveal the intercultural barriers arisen in the health practitioner-patient relationship. This article uncovers the beliefs about diabetes consistent with the broader cultural health/illness belief systems. We examine, also, diabetes management versus cultural knowledge. This paper reveals ways to cultural knowledge-based strategies to truly address diabetes health issues with different cultures patients. This article, based on cultural dimensions, is addressed to practitioners, researchers, and academics in order to achieve a particular skill set for culturally competent diabetes care to different cultures patients/families/communities.