Health professionals’ perceptions of communication difficulties in cross-cultural contexts

This paper is a first report on an interdisciplinary project dealing with cross-cultural communication in health and medicine undertakebn by the Centre for Community Languages in the Professions. In this paper health professionals’ perceptions of communication difficulties are examined, especially their understanding of the role of language in cross-cultural communication. The project revealed that health professionals who had regular contact with people from diverse cultural backgrounds were aware of the influence culture can exert on the attitudes and the behaviour of NESB people in relation to health care. In general they had some difficulty in establishing the role of language in cultural misunderstandings if both parties (interactants) communicated through the same language.