Cross-Cultural Patient Counseling and Communication in the Integrative Medicine Setting: Respecting the Patient's Health Belief Model of Care.

Identifying cross-cultural barriers to healthcare provider-patient communication is important in order to address the potential for conflict between conventional and "alternative" health beliefs; difficulties in creating a shared-decision making process; disagreement on therapeutic goals and treatment plan; and finally, the potential for non-compliance or non-adherence to the conventional oncology treatment. Acquiring intercultural competencies is needed at all stages of medical education, and should be implemented in medical and nursing curricula, as well as during specialization and sub-specialization. As with patient-centered paradigms of care, integrative medicine entails a dual patient-centered and sensitive-cultural approach, based on a comprehensive bio-psycho-social-spiritual model of care.