Transculturality: the new frontier of care relationships

Abstract

Taking care of migrants constitutes a new challenge for the actual operative structures of the services in general and for the sanitary service in particular, requiring a global and permanent rethinking with regards to both the offer and the procedures for decoding the requests. What determines the complexity of offering care while respecting differences is the fact that it can not be done without the professionals individually deconstructing racism and maturing an anti-racist awareness. However, attention to this question is neither widespread nor shared during the training of doctors and of health service workers in general. It is necessary, therefore, to broaden the traditional staffclient relationship (usually articulated in the dyad staffsubject/client-object) until it is recognized that both parts have a double role, both as a subject and as an object, within the aid process. The transcultural model is based on the concept of reciprocity. What the transcultural relationship involves is a parallel process of a redefinition of identity, both of the doctor or health service worker and of the client: it is necessary for both to question parameters that they considered certain, overcoming their inevitable resistance in the process. It appears necessary to explore within the training programs the strategies that people, in this specific case the professionals whose work regards health, adopt to avoid challenging racism and the implications that these can have in their daily duties.