Ethnic elders and American health care--a physician's perspective

The aging process is a fugue composed of innumerable themes; the theme of "ethnicity" is by far one of its more dominant. Due to the increasing incidence of chronic, progressive infirmity and acute, catastrophic illness, the elderly are thrust into direct contact with the health care systems of their society. The experiences of ethnic elders in American health care situations are fraught with conflict and mutual dissatisfaction with the physician-patient relationship. Both providers and consumers of health care services harbor differing culture-bound perceptions of health, illness and the healing process; these cultural beliefs define personal and professional needs and expectations and notions of how those needs are to be met by others. Both physicians and patients can enhance their communication and their compassion for one another by acknowledgment of cultural differences and by increased willingness to interpret motives and behavior within native context.It behooves us in medicine to examine the cultural traditions underlying our own attitudes, beliefs and values about the aged in a universal sense, as well as in a culturally specific sense, that we may gain insight that will be helpful in serving elderly persons more effectively, and in solving some of the problems inherent in the aging process.