Garbiñe Elizegi Narbarte Euskalduna (Basque)
RN, BSN, MS, PhD candidate
University of California, San Francisco, United States of America
 

Basque women and gender non-normative individuals’ experiences with culturally safe healthcare in the Basque Country.

Elizegi Narbarte, G., Dubbin, L., James, J., Perez-Urdiales, I., & Aguinaga Bialous, S.

15-minute Oral Presentation
Monday 09 December, 12:00pm

Purpose: As members of an Indigenous and ethnic minority culture, Basque women and gender non-normative individuals risk suboptimal healthcare services and outcomes. This study explores their experiences with healthcare and identifies the barriers and facilitators to culturally safe healthcare in the Basque Country.

Methods: We used a critical ethnographic approach to conduct 37 semi-structured interviews, health clinic observations, and 4 focus groups. Thematic analysis was used to identify overarching themes using transcripts and field notes.

Results: We identified two overarching themes: euskalfobia in the healthcare system and gender bias and discrimination during the healthcare encounter. For the first major theme, normalization of euskarafobia, invisibilizing Basque language and culture, and devaluing cultural healing practices are barriers to cultural safety, while language and cultural concordance is a facilitator. For the second major theme, barriers to cultural safety are knowledge transmission gap regarding women’s health, discrimination based on sexual and/or gender identity, and the presence of obstetric and gynecologic violence, while promoting participants´ autonomy is a facilitator.

Conclusions: Participants’ experiences reveal multiple barriers to culturally safe health care. Language and cultural concordant care, promoting autonomy in healthcare services and non-biased gender equity in healthcare can improve healthcare experiences in the Basque context.