Intercultural healthcare refers to when people of different cultures and languages communicate and interact in the healthcare context. Intercultural competence is pivotal to provide congruent and meaningful care. The notion intercultural stresses that at least two cultures are involved; however, many use the term cultural. Cultural competence has been described as a process in healthcare interactions and systems, aiming to increase equity and reduce disparities in care. Cultural competence shares core components with patient centered care, but patient centered care is difficult when the values of patients are in conflict with the values of the healthcare professionals and systems. Cultural diversity can lead to conflicts of the most fundamental values and thus, intercultural healthcare requires that professionals have opportunities and skills to deal with value conflicts. We present a relational ethics approach for intercultural competence. The basic ideas of relational ethics, and of intercultural competence, are that they exist in relationships, the context is of importance and true dialogue is the core. The components of intercultural competence are explained and include intercultural dialogue, intercultural reflection and intercultural learning. Furthermore, intercultural communication, i.e. the act of communicating between distinct cultural groups, is pivotal to enable intercultural dialogue and should continuously be developed through intercultural learning in the process of understanding and adapting to the other. We will also discuss professional interpreters’ impact on cultural learning and mutual understanding in the intercultural healthcare context. We argue that healthcare professionals need to learn effective interpreting use as part of intercultural competence.