About the Conference: The complexity of the current healthcare environment challenges providers to interact with increasingly more diverse populations who present with widely varying beliefs and practices.  In an environment faced with life and death choices and decisions this diversity further complicates the ethical analysis patients and families use as they face living with dying fro acute and chronic health problems. To be able to appropirately and compassionately interact with today's patients, providers must be able to recognize how diverse cultural backgrounds both impact patients and families and influence their own values and beliefs. To be effective, they must be able to incorporate this understanding of culture into ethical treatment practices.