Quantifying the Language Barrier—A Total Survey of Parents’ Spoken Languages and Local Language Skills as Perceived by Different Professions in Pediatric Palliative Care

Larissa Alice Dreier,Julia Wager,Boris Zernikow

doi:10.3390/children7090118

Larissa Alice Dreier, Julia Wager + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/children7090118

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Abstract

To date, there are no specific figures on the language-related characteristics of families receiving pediatric palliative care. This study aims to gain insights into the languages spoken by parents, their local language skills and the consistency of professional assessments on these aspects. Using an adapted version of the “Common European Framework of Reference for Languages”, the languages and local language skills of parents whose children were admitted to an inpatient pediatric palliative care facility (N = 114) were assessed by (a) medical staff and (b) psychosocial staff. Nearly half of the families did not speak the local language as their mother tongue. The most frequently spoken language was Turkish. Overall, the medical staff attributed better language skills to parents than the psychosocial staff did. According to them, only 27.0% of mothers and 38.5% of fathers spoke the local language at a high level while 37.8% of mothers and 34.6% of fathers had no or rudimentary language skills. The results provide important information on which languages pediatric palliative care practitioners must be prepared for. They sensitize to the fact that even within an institution there can be discrepancies between the language assessments of different professions.

Highlights

Communication is an integral component of health care worldwide
This study aims to answer the following questions: (1) Which languages do families admitted to a pediatric palliative care unit speak? (2) If the local language is not spoken in the mother tongue: How good are the mother’s and father’s local language skills? and (3) do staff members of different professions agree in their assessment of parental local language skills?
The results show that almost half of the parents on the pediatric palliative care unit speak a mother tongue other than the local language

Summary

Introduction

Communication is an integral component of health care worldwide. Looking at data on root causes for adverse events and patient harm in clinical practice, faulty communication is consistently among the top four ranks [1]. Language and culture form an inseparable, complex and mutually influential unit. Language is formed by the unique characteristics of a culture and at the same time gives expression to it. Comparable to a mirror, language provides essential insights into the culture of a person [3,4]. Because of today’s cultural diversity, successful communication on the language level cannot be taken for granted either in general health care or in specialized disciplines like pediatric palliative care. Successful communication is essential due to the following reasons: First, numerous care providers are involved in a child’s care, requiring a constant exchange between the various care providers and between different care providers and parents [5].

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