TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - Cross-cultural Communication A1 - Denberg, Thomas A1 - Feldman, Mitchell D. A2 - Feldman, Mitchell D. A2 - Christensen, John F. A2 - Satterfield, Jason M. PY - 2014 T2 - Behavioral Medicine: A Guide for Clinical Practice, 4e AB - Effective clinician–patient communication involves verbal and nonverbal sharing of information across cultural and linguistic boundaries. In the medical arena, these boundaries are populated on the one side by clinicians who represent the esoteric world of biomedicine, and on the other side by patients and families who often lack familiarity with biomedical concepts and procedures and may have their own strongly held beliefs about illness—what it means, how it should be diagnosed, and how it should be treated. The goals of effective cross-cultural communication (or “cultural competency,” as it is sometimes called) are threefold: (1) to understand illness from the perspective of the patient; (2) to assist patients in understanding diseases and treatments from the perspective of biomedicine; and (3) to help patients and their families navigate, express themselves, and feel comfortable within large, complex, and often impersonal health care organizations. These activities require some awareness of the wider context of patients’ lives, and of how the worlds of biomedicine and the lay public interact and, at times, conflict and misunderstand each other. SN - PB - McGraw-Hill Education CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/10/11 UR - accessmedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1102937330 ER -