Immigrant Patient Care Inequalities: The Importance of the Intercultural Approach

Research carried out in the main countries of destination for immigration has repeatedly attested to the inequalities between the host and immigrant populations by way of several markers indicating health and the quality of medical care received. The aim of the this paper is to identify, from the perspective of healthcare professionals, the difficulties related to immigrant healthcare, as well as to gather up proposals for improvement put forward by these professionals to deal with such situations. Our results show that these professionals perceive the reception of immigrants as a challenge to the proper provision of healthcare. They highlight the barrier imposed by ignorance of the official language by immigrants and the lack of linguistic and cultural adaptation to the healthcare services themselves as the main difficulty.