Understanding patients from the former Soviet Union.

BACKGROUND: Increasing numbers of immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU) are coming to the United States. Educated and resilient, this population has many ethnic origins, but all have shared a common experience under the Soviet system and the deterioration of health care since the collapse of the Soviet Union. An ethnomedical approach was used to review published work and integrate material obtained in interviews with physicians in the FSU. Information is organized into concepts of causality, therapists, and forms of therapy. FSU medicine incorporates many Western treatments but also uses natural and spa remedies. Mainstream FSU physicians make diagnoses and use therapies that are unknown in the West. In addition, the active traditions of folk medicine and magical curing persist. US health care practitioners need to go to extra lengths to understand the perspectives and experiences of these patients and must explain basic concepts of health care in this country that will be new. An open approach to the patients' non-Western beliefs and remedies will support a successful patient-practitioner interaction.