Cultural Fault Lines in Healthcare Reflections on Cultural Competency

American healthcare faces two interpenetrating certainties. First, our country's mosaic of worldviews and values unavoidably generates clashes in hospitals and clinics. Second, our public mistrusts our healthcare system and delivery. These issues fuel each other and reflect cultural fault lines, the most fundamental being the ever-widening gap between serving our own interests while disregarding the concerns of more vulnerable patients, those Others who remain marginalized because they are Other.

Michael C. Brannigan is the George and Jane Pfaff Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral Values at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, and also teaches for the Alden March Bioethics Institute at Albany Medical College. His more recent books include Ethics Across Cultures; Striking a Balance: A Primer in Traditional Asian Values; and Cross-Cultural Biotechnology.