文本框: INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION FOR PEDIATRIC NURSES Hartog-Dammer, J.W. Pediatric Oncology ward, Emma Children’s Hospital, Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands One of the most important tasks we have as nurses is to look after a good communication with our patients and their parents. An efficient communication is very important when we have to provide good care. Not only by understanding their wishes and questions, but also to create a basis of trust. In our society we have to deal with different cultures and sometimes with different languages. It’s not always easy to give the right information and instruction to patients and parents that are understandable for them. And it’s not always easy to find out their needs. Within the pediatric care it’s not only the child we have to communicate with, but also with the parents. To inform your patient and his or her parents well will be sometimes difficult. An interpreter can mean a lot of help. But it is not only a matter of language. Intercultural communication in the field of health is affected by different elements such as clinical picture, culture, social environment, skills, attitudes, knowledge and language; verbal as well as non-verbal. Some non-verbal expressions, for instance, seem to be universal, but there are many expressions that are cultural specific. Differences in non-verbal communication can be a tremendous barrier to give good care. Knowledge about an intercultural communication is necessary to improve our care. Intercultural communication doesn’t only mean communication between different ethnic backgrounds. Ethnicity is not the most divided issue here but the differences in ideas. This can exist in the same ethnic group as well. Within this presentation there will be room for telling something about cultural differences, language problems and how we can deal with these problems. It will be put into a theoretical frame to make things more clear. How more the culture, the social environment and language differs from the dominated culture the more skills are asked from us as pediatric nurses. To professionalize within the nursing field, on the one hand, we ought to know more about the theory of communication and, on the other hand, we have to learn to put our communication skills into practice. 1947