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EDITORIALS: A Rashid Gatrad, Erica Brown, Hardev Notta, and Aziz Sheikh Palliative care needs of minorities BMJ 2003; 327: 176-177 [Full text]

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re: Palliative care needs of minorities (Special edition BMJ on Death & Dying)

Mark R D Johnson, Kip Jones   (28 July 2003)

re: Palliative care needs of minorities (Special edition BMJ on Death & Dying) 28 July 2003
Mark R D Johnson, Professor of Diversity in Health Social Care Mary Seacole Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester LE2 1RQ, Kip Jones Send response to journal: Re: re: Palliative care needs of minorities (Special edition BMJ on Death & Dying)	Gatrad and colleagues (1) provide welcome encouragement for the growth of understanding of the needs of minorities. We are all, of course, minorities in our own way. As they point out, each of us has a culture, and possibly a religious tradition, to come from and to fall back on, but as they also observe, each of us as an individual observes and follows these in our own way. Fundamental change in institutional arrangements, education, and the willingness of service providers (not just in health care) to embrace complexity and diversity, is certainly required. The move towards teaching or training in 'spirituality', so far advances in an avowedly secular United States of America, is a good step which is slowly taking root over here. Our centre was commissioned to review the research literature and evidence on spirituality in health by the Leicester Health Action Zone, and much of the resultant material is recorded on our web-site (2). The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, and that means the personal realisation by all health care professionals that their clients will have their own spirituality - however we and they may define that. Mark R D Johnson (Professor of Diversity in Health & Social Care) Kip Jones (ESRC Fellow in Qualitative Evidence in Ethnicity & Health Care) Centre for Evidence in Ethnicity Health & Diversity (CEEHD) Mary Seacole Research Centre De Montfort University Leicester LE2 1RQ References: 1: Gatrad AR, Brown E, Notta H, Sheikh A 2003 Palliative care needs of minorities: Understanding their needs is the key British Medical Journal 327 :176-177 2: See papers on our CEEHD web-site: http://users.wbs.ac.uk/group/ceehd/home/end_of_life Competing interests:   MRDJ is Director of a research centre dedicated to promoting evidence-based 'cultural competence', and a contributor to a proposed national resource of the training of health care professionals in trans-cultural health care practice.