Understand Me app
Available to download FREE from App Store (Apple) and Google Play Store (Android). Click links below:
Understand Me mobile app has been developed to assist health care professionals caring for people from diverse ethnic, religious and cultural groups who may also have Limited English proficiency (LEP).
This app features key information on caring for ill and dying patients from specific ethnic, religious and cultural groups, based on the HSE National Social Inclusion Unit guide, Health Services Intercultural Guide: Responding to the Needs of Diverse Religious Communities and Cultures in Healthcare Settings.
Core difficulties identified for palliative care professionals:
- Cultural appropriateness of talking about death and dying.
- Familiarity and clear understanding around proper rituals for people according to their ethnicity and religious affiliations. E.g. washing the body.
- A range of resources are available, however most palliative care professionals interviewed highlighted it can be difficult to easily access them when needed.
The Understand Me mobile app was developed in order to meet these needs and to make these resources more readily available for health care professionals and ancillary staff in all health care settings.
Key Features:
- Key information on a wide range of ethnic, religious and cultural practices and beliefs. The app provides information on 25 different groups from Jehovah’s Witnesses to Buddhist traditions and the Irish Traveller community.
- Guidelines and information for palliative healthcare professionals working with interpreters and multi-cultural patient groups.
- Advice on assessing language needs of patients.
- Best practice for working with interpreters.
- Direct access to further resources and information:
- Direct link to: Health Services Intercultural Guide: Responding to the Needs of Diverse Religious Communities and Cultures in Healthcare Settings.
- Direct link to: On Speaking Terms: Good practice guidelines for HSE staff in the provision of interpreter services.
- In-app GPS directions and contact details to all listed Palliative Care services in Ireland.
Health Services Intercultural Guide
Introduction to and use of the Guide
Census 2006 demonstrates that the growth in the Irish population is accompanied by significant diversity in national origin, ethnicity and religious affiliation. This builds on the diversity of religious communities and ethnic groups that were present in Ireland before the last wave of migration. The increasing diversity is evident both among those who use the health services and the staff teams who proved these services.
This Guide was developed in response to an expressed need by healthcare staff across a range of cultural backgrounds for knowledge, skills and awareness in delivering care to people from backgrounds other than their own. To this end the Guide profiles the religious and cultural needs of twenty-five diverse groups who are being cared for in healthcare settings. These groups comprise twenty-one religious groups, 3 ethnic/cultural groups and people without religious belief.
The Guide was developed under the HSE National Intercultural Health Strategy 2007 to 2012 as part of a framework of initiatives designed to build capacity to deliver culturally competent care in Irish health settings.
Good Practice in Person-Centred Intercultural Care
Overview of Headings and Themes
Acknowledgment of Images and Symbols used in the Document
Download Health Services Intercultural Guide – Full Document.pdf (.pdf – 3385 KB) Responding to the needs of diverse religious communities and cultures in healthcare settings
Church of Ireland/Anglican Communion
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as Mormonism)
First Church of Christ, Scientist (also known as Christian Science)
Methodist Church (also known as Methodism)
People Without Religious Belief