The Implications of Cultural Diversity for Health Care Practice: an anthropological perspective

As Britain's Asian and West Indian population has steadily grown in size, many doctors and nurses, and especially those working in inner city areas, have found that an increasing proportion of their patients belong to one or the other of the ethnic minorities. Reactions vary, but many are finding it difficult to provide effective health care to such patients, and there is much perplexity about what form an appropriate response might be. Little in their training will have prepared them to cope with cultural diversity, and few will have had any expectation or experience of diversity on its current scale. Nationally about 8% of all births are now to mothers of non-European descent, but in many urban areas the figures are much higher. In many parts of London and the West Midlands, as well as in the textile towns on both sides of the Pennines, one third or more of all births are of this kind. Hence it is obstetricians and paediatricians who are currently most aware of the scale of these issues. But as the present demographic imbalance evens itself out over the years, all other specialties will encounter an increasing number of minority patients. Moreover an increasing number of General Practitioners, and especially those working in inner-city areas, may soon find that a majority of their patients are of Asian or Afro-Caribbean origin.