Moving ‘Beyond Neutrality’ and Cross-Cultural Training: Using World Café Dialogue to Address End-of-Life Care Inequalities

Abstract

In this article I discuss how World Café Dialogues can be used to unveil structural and cultural violence that drive the behaviors that maintain end-of-life care inequalities, especially among minorities, in acute healthcare hospitals. Conflict practitioners are rarely included in conversations of end-of-life care inequalities and when included it is to “solve a problem” through bioethics mediation or provide training in cross-cultural competence. I argue that conflict practitioners need to broaden their approach to conflict and use their skills to surface unequal power structures and implicit beliefs that maintain the unjust status quo in end-of-life care disparities.

Keywords: End-of-Life, Healthcare Inequalities, Bioethics, World Café Dialogue, Cross-cultural Training, Physician Education