CROSS-CULTURAL OCCUPATIONAL-THERAPY - A CRITICAL REFLECTION

In the Netherlands, Dutch health care professionals, including occupational therapists, are confronted with a growing number of patients whose cultural backgrounds differ from theirs. Acknowledging this influx, the Dutch government allocated a grant for educating occupational therapy students on cross-cultural care. This paper summarizes the information we collected from a survey of Dutch occupational therapists on treatment of immigrants and briefly describes the eight educational tools we developed for the two occupational therapy curricula. Two of these tools are described fully-first, a critical essay on the white middle-class values and norms that underlie occupational therapy theory and practice, and second, the guidelines for developmental policies to use in the treatment of immigrant patients. Case studies illustrate bow the values of our profession create obstacles to cross-cultural care.