Toward Improved Rehabilitation Services for Ethnically Diverse Survivors of Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury is an important public health problem in the United States, especially for individuals from racial and ethnic minorities. The first part of this article provides a synthesis of findings and discussions of cultural issues in the rehabilitation, medical, and psychological scientific literature highlighting the needs and challenges of our diverse population of minority traumatic brain injury survivors in the United States. The second part offers practical recommendations for rehabilitation professionals who desire to improve the healthcare and health outcomes of these individuals. Through an examination of research, guidelines, and resources, we justify the importance of cultural sensitivity in everyday provider interactions with minority clients and their families.

A qualitative study on cross-cultural communication in post-accident in-patient rehabilitation of migrant and ethnic minority patients in Austria

“…As practically the whole population of Austria is insured under the social security system, unlike in other countries such as the USA [15,21], access to the health system for migrant/ethnic minority patients is not an issue.…”

“…However, cross-cultural communication in in-patient rehabilitation after accidents has not been studied in Austria so far. Studies in other countries, for example in the USA [8,15] or in Australia [16], have addressed aspects of the rehabilitation of migrants and ethnic minorities, for instance after traumatic brain injury.…”

Working with immigrant families raising a child with a disability: challenges and recommendations for healthcare and community service providers

“…Although there is an increasing cultural diversity of clients who have differing beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviors [41], rehabilitation providers are often inadequately prepared to provide culturally sensitive care [16,27,43]. For example, Murden et al [44] found that among occupational therapists, there was not enough exposure to cultural issues in both universitybased education and fieldwork.…”

“…Providing culturally sensitive care to immigrant families can be challenging because health beliefs, views of disability, perceived relevance of health services, and language of clients and their caregivers often differ from health providers [13][14][15][16][17][18]. Immigrants from an ethnic minority background often face a number of challenges to receiving effective healthcare [19,20] including language obstacles, discrimination, fear of Western medicine and lack of knowledge of healthcare services [21][22][23].…”

Avaliação e Reabilitação Neuropsicológica: Desenvolvimento Histórico e Perspectivas Atuais

“…As diferenças interculturais têm sido extensamente discutidas enquanto importantes para subsidiar o processo decisório durante a reabilitação (Niermeier & Arango-Lasprilla, 2007;Uamoto, 2005). Sendo assim, torna-se premente que o pesquisador na área da avaliação e reabilitação neuropsicológica considere estes fatores quando planeja seus estudos.…”