Patient-doctor encounters are rich in cultural context. Primary care consultationshave special framings where language and culture might differ largelybetween patients and care-givers. In such situations, the health professionalsneed extra skills to elucidate overt or covert messages from the patients.One skill is how to use professional interpreters. Other useful tools arethe ability to identify one-self as a cultural person and a know-how about themigration process but also to recognize idioms of distress, family structuresand patients’ explanatory models of illness.