Culture Brokering
Culture brokering is advocating, mediating, negotiating, and intervening between the client's culture and the biomedical health care culture on behalf of clients. Nurses facilitate client access to health care as they are positioned to understand both cultures and resolve or lessen problems that result when individuals in either culture do not understand the other person's values. To illustrate, migrant workers tend to have high occupational mobility; many are poor and have limited formal education. They may seek health care only when they are ill and cannot work. Whenever a nurse from the mobile health care van interacts with them, the opportunity should be taken to teach about prevention, health maintenance, environmental sanitation, and nutrition, because it may be the only opportunity the nurse will ever have to care for that particular migrant worker. Nurses should also advocate for the rights of the migrant worker to receive quality health care. For example, the nurse may con¬tact the migrant health services for follow-up or referral care for the migrant worker.