Excerpt:
Research by Fuusje de Graaff of NIVEL (Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research) finds that in palliative care, the professional values of care-providers clashes with the culture values of Turkish and Moroccan patients.
De Graaff researched what shape the palliative care takes for patients of Turkish and Moroccan background. For Turks and Moroccans an illness is usually a matter for the whole family. They have no idea what to do with the diagnosis 'incurable'. They often don't tell the critically ill patient, hoping not to deprive him of a cure. They expect the doctors to do everything to try and cure the patient, even if he's incurably ill.
Dutch health-care providers give priority to the quality of life. If the doctors say that the patient will die soon, the health-care providers assume alleviating pain and discomfort is more important than stretching out the patient's life. Turkish and Moroccan patients and family members don't accept that as much. They think the moment of death is in God's hands, and can't be decided by the doctors. Additionally they're afraid that pain-management makes them drowsy, and they want to be lucid when they appear before Allah.