The 'Other' in End-of-life Care: Providers' Understandings of Patients with Migrant Backgrounds

Research on how end-of-life care providers make sense of cultural, ethnic and religious diversity is relatively scarce. This article explores end-of-life care providers' understandings of patients with migrant backgrounds through a study based on focus group interviews. The analysis brings to the fore three themes: the expectation that the existence of difference and uncertainty is a given when caring for patients with migrant backgrounds; the expectation that the extension of responsibility that difference entails creates a variety of dilemmas; and the expectation that difference will bring about misunderstandings and that patients' needs can go unmet as a result of this. On the basis of these themes we suggest that the end-of-life care providers interviewed regard patients with migrant backgrounds as Others' and themselves as providers that cannot deliver so called culture-competent care. The findings are problematised using the lens that the debate on patient-centredness offers. The article suggests that if the uniqueness of all patients is to be seriously taken into account then Othering' is perhaps what patient-centredness actually entails.