Multicultural End-of-Life Care : Dying and Diversity : Clinical Guidelines for a Multicultural Practice

• Treat every patient as a unique individual.

• Allow the patient to define her/his culture and community; ask the patient about the community's response to death and dying, health and healing.

• Determine the patient's world view and value system by adding cultural questions to your assessment. (from T.M. Trainer's presentation "Cultural Suffering: Added Distress for Ethnic Minority Cancer Patients?").

• Be aware of the power differentials in the patient-provider relationship.

• Include the identification of culturally specific issues in addition to regular medical documentation. (from Sujata Warrier's "Outline of Training on Cultural Competency for Staff of Family Violence Prevention Fund", 1999)

• In respecting patient dignity and self determination, respect cultural differences. (Terry Altilio's workshop "Aspects of the health care/patient/family, Experience informed by culture, gender and age," 2000)

• Recognize that the perception of events is filtered through the lens of a person's culture.

• Learn about the religious beliefs of the patient and how these religious beliefs come into play in the process of dying and death.

• If you do not speak the language of the patient, use trained interpreters. (from T. M. Trainer's presentation "Cultural Suffering: Added Distress for Ethnic Minority Cancer Patients").

• Be aware that not all societies agree that patient autonomy, self-determination, and truth telling are moral absolutes. (from T. M. Trainer's presentation "Cultural Suffering: Added Distress for Ethnic Minority Cancer Patients").

• Remember that your individual view of reality does not account for all the phenomena of life.

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