Cultural Barriers in Healthcare Delivery from the Perspective of Patients

Abstract: Background Many patients especially from minority backgrounds are typically faced with cultural barriers during health care encounters and this hinders the delivery of culturally competent healthcare. This study seeks to understand how cultural barriers faced by patients are crucial in attaining the delivery of culturally competent healthcare. Aims   The aim of this study is to examine cultural barriers in the delivery of healthcare services from the  patient’s perspective. Method The method is a literature review based on qualitative primary research. Ten articles were selected from the CINAHL, PUBMED and Google scholar databases. All articles selected were published between 2010 and 2020. The quality of the articles used were assessed using a review template for qualitative studies. Data was analysed using the literature review matrix method.  Results The results suggest that four main cultural barriers from the perspectives of patients impacted healthcare delivery. These cultural barriers included the following; communication problems arising during verbal and nonverbal interactions, mistrust and discrimination arising as a result of previous contact with the health care system, socio-economic status and finally low propensity to seek healthcare.  Conclusion   To conclude it is evident that patients face a plethora of cultural barriers during their interactions with health care services and their experiences can be shaped by a number of variables and factors. These cultural challenges hinder accessibility to proper health care services might lead to inequality in the provision of health care services.