Measuring quality and patient satisfaction in healthcare communication with foreign-language speakers

Alexander Bischoff

doi:10.52034/lanstts.v5i.159

Abstract

Healthcare services face increasing challenges to provide accessible care to an equally increasing diversity ofpatient populations. This is clearly reflected in the linguistic diversity ofpeople living in Switzerland and can be seen mostplainly in the country ’s public hospitals. After a literature review on language barriers in clinical services and the potential impact that interpreters can have in clinical outcomes, we describe how interpreters can be introduced in a primary care setting and how the quality of communication with foreign-language-speaking patients as well as their satisfaction with communication can be improved. Changes in the quality of inter - preter-mediated communication, as rated by the patients themselves, can be monitored and have a beneficial impact on the quality of care. This is important at a time of growing cultural and linguistic diversity in Switzerland and other countries, which requires healthcare systems to implement highquality professional interpreter services that ensure effective communication withforeign-language-speakingpatients.

Highlights

Healthcare services face increasing challenges to provide accessible care to an increasing diversity of patient populations. This is clearly reflected in the linguistic diversity of people living in Switzerland and can be seen most plainly in the country’s public hospitals, whose patients constitute a representative sample of Swiss residents
We review the existing health literature on the impact of interpreters and describe how interpreters can be introduced in a primary care setting and how the quality of communication with foreign-language speakers (FLS) patients, as well as their satisfaction with communication, can be improved
In increasingly diverse patient populations there is a need to overcome language barriers faced by FLS

Summary

Introduction

Healthcare services face increasing challenges to provide accessible care to an increasing diversity of patient populations. This is clearly reflected in the linguistic diversity of people living in Switzerland and can be seen most plainly in the country’s public hospitals, whose patients constitute a representative sample of Swiss residents. According to national census data, ten per cent of Swiss residents are foreign-language speakers (FLS), i.e. they do not speak one of the local languages: German, French, Italian, Romansh (Lüdi & Werlen 2005). Language barriers between patients and healthcare providers are a major obstacle to the provision of quality care to culturally diverse populations.

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Conclusion