Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia
Corso di laurea in infermieristica - Sede di Modena

Abstract

Immigration is a phenomenon that brings with it numerous effects in every social context, including the health field. The encounter between different cultures can generate differences in the provision of care due to an incorrect communication between foreign patient and healthcare professionist. Nurses take on a key role in the multicultural context as it is one of the operators who have the task of canceling the welfare differences that could arise. The aim of this non research thesis is to identify the main problems that healthcare professionals encounter during assistance to foreign users and the solutions adopted to solve them. Particular importance was given to non-verbal communication, highlighting the possible interpretative differences between different cultures and the topic concerning the cultural concepts of distress was studied in depth. The literature review was conducted by consulting the UpToDate, CINAHL, Nursing Reference Center and Google Scholar databases using search strings: "cultural cross-cultural OR multicultural AND nursing", "cultural competence AND health care", "nonverbal communication / non-verbal communication "," intercultural communication / intercultural communication ". For the part relating to the cultural concepts of suffering, the Pubmed and Google Scholar databases were consulted with the search string "culture-bound syndrome", "cultural concepts of distress" and using the names related to each cultural concept of suffering. At the end of the paper the role of the cultural mediator is defined, the regulations that regulate the professional figure and the importance of specific post-basic training in transcultural matters for nurses and other health workers.