ABSTRACT
Intervention in health care must be sensitive to cultural nuances which may influence the interactions between provider and client. Culture and ethnicity are tightly interwoven. Culture is broadly defined as a set of possibilities from which the family may choose (Anderson & Fenichel, 1989). More specifically, culture refers to all that people have learned to do, to value, and to enjoy from their history, hence it is the shared patterns of learned behavior, both implicit and explicit, or the transmitted symbols representing the achieve-
ments of a particular historical group; therefore, it becomes the framework that guides all life practices (Crowe, 1997). Ethnicity, on the other hand, is the social or cultural heritage shared by a particular group, which relates to the group's customs, language, religion, and habits that are passed on from generation to generation (Crowe, 1997). However, a family's cultural identity does not always dictate how the family will respond to a health crisis. Many combined factors are involved. Professionals must therefore be careful to avoid stereotyping clients of color and making assumptions that all members of a particular cultural group will react in a predetermined manner.
