Indicative quotations: culture as only one aspect of patient complexity
| Participants | Quote |
| P18 (female, counsellor) | So, for me now, it’s looking at, “Well, what were those cultural expectations? To what degree does my client subscribe to them?” She’s actually from the same cultural background, and so it really becomes about families, about individuation, about what is community and then what’s the intersection between all of them […] if we heard this particular cultural expectation we’d all go, “Oh yes, we know that of that culture”. But actually, it’s not working for this family who are actually all from the same culture (FG3). |
| P18 (female, counsellor) | I think there is no doubt that there’s always a tension at an ethical level between providing client-centred care for an individual and being able to meet greater service demands and being able to capture a greater group of people. I think that’s a reality. Unfortunately, I think it gets used as an excuse for not providing good quality client-centred care and I suppose part of what we’ve been trying to even define today is what is client-centred care? Is it looking at the individual or is it looking at the individual within family and then what are the confidentiality issues, the privacy issues, the respect of culture issues that come up there? (FG3). |
| P57 (male, medical practitioner) | In very complex care scenarios, you almost need people who subspecialise in (cultural competence) in a way because it’s almost too much to assume everyone maintains the competency you need to have to look after these patients, in a way. There needs to be a group of people who have quick resources, the extra time, and they’re actually protected from having to treat them in a quick way. That’s the only way it’s going to be done properly (FG8). |
| P30 (female, nurse) P28 (female, nurse) | P30: And some of the challenges around new diagnosis, depending on certain cultures, you can’t generalise, but some believe that cancer is contagious … No matter what you say it’s— P28: It’s ingrained P30: —it’s ingrained to shift that and that can be very hard to observe when you know that it can be a better process. Yeah, but it’s so ingrained (FG4). |
| P38 (female, clinical psychologist) | Because it’s part of the mix. I mean, you’re presenting that as though it’s a dichotomy, but it’s not a dichotomy. It’s just part of the complexity, and if the cultural aspect of that person is more predominant, then that’s going to be more of that complexity for that person. If there are other things that come into the mix and if you’ve got low SES, isolation, depression, and all that sort of thing, then you’re taking that all into account. So I don’t know that it’s an either/or kind of thing. I think it’s definitely important, but it’s not always the most important thing. You’ve just got to allow for that diversity. I agree with you. I think a lot of the things that we look at as far as how we’re going to respond better to a culturally diverse population, we should be thinking about for everybody. So some of the things that we can learn from doing that better we should be able to move onto other people as well (FG6). |