Minority healthcare providers experience challenges, trust, and interdependency in a multicultural team.

BACKGROUND

The nursing community in the Nordic countries has become multicultural because of migration from European, Asian and African countries. In Norway, minority health care providers are recruited in to nursing homes which have become multicultural workplaces. They overcome challenges such as language and strangeness but as a group they are vulnerable and exposed to many challenges.

PURPOSE

The aim is to explore minority healthcare providers, trained nurses and nurses' assistants, and their experiences of challenges when working in a multicultural team in a Norwegian context.

RESEARCH METHOD

The study has a qualitative design, using narrative interviews, and a phenomenological-hermeneutic analysis method to explore the experiences of challenges in dementia care.

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The study was approved by The Norwegian Regional Ethics Committee, and the Norwegian Social Science Data Services.

PARTICIPATION AND RESEARCH CONTEXT

Five informants from different African, Asian and European countries participated in the study. The study was conducted in a Norwegian nursing home, in a dementia care unit.

FINDINGS

The results show that minority health care providers experience and find meaning in being a member of a team, they overcome challenges, characterized by the interdependency in the team, appreciating new cultural experiences and striving to belong. They must overcome challenges such as language problems and the feeling of strangeness.

DISCUSSION

The findings are discussed considering Løgstrup's ethic of proximity, the ethical demand of trust, and interdependency. The ethical demand is an answer to a common, transparent, unspoken agreement to be met, seen, and understood.

CONCLUSION

The study shows that cooperation in a multi-professional and multi-ethnic team is important, and secures the quality of care to persons with dementia. Further research is necessary to examine the relation between a multi-ethnic staff and the patients experiencing dementia. Further research is necessary to examine ethnicity, the relation between a multi-ethnic staff, the patients experiencing dementia and next of kin.