Providing care for newcomers demands much more from doctors than just medical knowledge. Doctors must also deal with language barriers, missing medical records, cultural differences and a healthcare system in which treatments are frequently interrupted. The new Expertise Centre for Care for Newcomers in the Netherlands (EZONN) aims to help doctors continue to provide good care despite these obstacles.
A doctor often has no more than ten or fifteen minutes to get to know a new patient. What are their symptoms? When did they start? What treatments have they already tried? Usually, the answers can be found somewhere in a medical record. “With new patients, that conversation often starts with blank pages,” says gynaecologist Ineke Postma of EZONN.
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