Promoting Culturally Sensitive Communication with Diverse Patient Populations

The old adage “You never get a second chance to make a first impression” applies daily in the practice of anesthesiology. The field is marked by brief encounters with patients during some of their most stressful life events: before the birth of a child, before a major surgery, or in the face of critical illness. Imagine the same interactions from the patient's perspective occurring in a foreign land. Global health encompasses medical care, education, research, and policy with the goal of promoting health equity for all. As a field, global health transcends geographical borders to apply to diverse patients of various cultural, ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds at home and abroad. Engagement in global health can facilitate culturally sensitive communication and help anesthesiologists quickly establish rapport during the preoperative evaluation and consent process, especially since the approach to informed consent and medical decision-making varies greatly across cultures. Since communication and...