From patient healthcare to global health: Interculturality in the medical field

Abstract

Exhaustively understanding the concept of health and how interculturality forms a part in it requires the distinct perception of its multifaceted and utterly complex playgrounds. Different conceptions of health and their potential underlying interculturality and implications can range from classic patient-doctor relations to the sphere of international and global health. While a linkage of intercultural counseling in the realm of health theoretically does exist when it comes to patient healthcare, it still seems limited and in its infancy. Hence, within topics such as the so-called migrant medicine and culturally sensitive patient care, the question whether the health sector in its work ethos will move beyond knowledge and assumption building on essentialist and positivist understandings of culture is debatable. Nevertheless, the conception of health can also transcend literal borders and be conceptualised as Global Health in exemplary form of humanitarian aid or the endeavour of combating diseases of global concern such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, potential re-thinking approaches by using knowledge from postcolonial theories can be seen and a current joint call to decolonise global health can be made evident. The article seeks to fathom this call and exemplify why despite these initial approaches, there is still a huge discrepancy between theoretical knowledge and practical application of it.