This literature review describes health-care professionals' perspective on roles and approaches in encounters with ethnic minorities with type 2 diabetes, including perceived barriers and potentials. They shift between roles in encounters with ethnic minority patients and they consider language and cultural barriers to have an impact on roles, communication as well as time consumption. They emphasise the importance of patient-centeredness and insight into patients' cultural background; however, they report lack of competences to provide good quality in diabetes care to ethnic minority patients.