This master’s thesis deals with linguistic and cultural misunderstandings of foreign speaking patients and medical staff in Slovenian healthcare, especially at the Neonatal intensive care unit in Maternity hospital of Ljubljana but also in comparable units abroad that face similar obstacles. Due to modern migration trends, healthcare workers have more frequent contact with patients with whom they are linguistically and culturally different. Healthcare workers play a very important role in the lives of imigrants who need healthcare. Examples of linguistic and cultural misunderstandings from the daily practice of healthcare workers are presented using the autoethnographic method. They are followed by an analysis of the functioning of the healthcare system, the thoughts of some healthcare workers, the reasons why such misunderstandings occur and the posibilities of solving them. It also examines migrant women, who are less often subject of research, but who due to their biological ability to give birth, have different experiences than men. The absence of systemic help in solving misunderstandings and other obstacles and reliance on ingenuity of medical personnel only exacerbates neoracism. In addition, some approaches for overcoming misunderstandings are presented - from professional training the healthcare workers, introduction of intercultural mediators to a multilingual manual for communication.
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