Workforce Language Services

We’ve seen many recent examples where language comes into play in our healthcare system (see “Poor prescription translations have dangerous results“; “Do Latinos receive adequate healthcare in the U.S.?“). Now, the NYTimes reports that some hospitals are looking beyond language to confront larger cultural and diversity issues that affect care.

In New York, hospitals are realizing that their patients, who come from all over the world, may not be accustomed to U.S. practices and protocol. So, they’re adopting new methods to make sure their patients feel comfortable during a stay, no matter where they come from.

At Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, a borough that is home to 2.3 million people from more than 100 countries, lactation consultants spend extra time explaining to Bangladeshi women that the yellow breast milk they produce right after birth is not dirty.

Female obstetricians are always on duty overnight at the hospital’s maternity ward in case a Muslim woman arrives in labor and does not want to be treated by a male doctor.

At the diabetes nutrition classes, where participants are mostly from Latin America, diet plans incorporate items like guava paste, plantains and chayote squash.

At Mercy Medical Center in Merced, Calif., shamans tend to the spiritual needs of the hospital’s many Hmong patients. Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital in Houston has a floor devoted to Asian patients, where the menu offers a selection of Chinese and Vietnamese comfort food, like chicken congee soup and steamed dumplings.

If you’ve ever been hospitalized overseas, you probably felt an extra level of discomfort caused by unfamiliarity with the medical practices, or simply the food served at the hospital cafeteria. Imagine how your experience might have been improved (and how much more you might have understood about the procedure or condition) had your healthcare provider understood where you came from.

That’s exactly how hospitals are starting to think. “Doctors and nurses are interviewing religious leaders, visiting cultural centers and even traveling abroad to better understand their patients.” It’s a great start!

Read the full NYTimes article here.

Instructions from your doctor can be confusing enough without adding a language barrier into the equation. So it’s not surprising that bad translations of prescription instructions can lead to dangerous results. What is surprising is that of the prescription companies that provide translations, many use machine-generated translations which only have a 50% accuracy rate.

“It’s something I experience in practice every day,” said Dr. Alejandro Clavier, who works at Esperanza Health Center in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood on the Southwest Side.

He gave an example of an anemic patient who showed no signs of improved iron levels after taking prescribed supplements. Clavier discovered the patient had been taking only one drop of the supplements instead of the amount that Clavier had prescribed. The patient had received confusing prescription instructions from the pharmacy.

Often misspellings or “Spanglish” in prescriptions can cause confusion, like “poca” (little) instead of “boca,” or “once a day” being misinterpreted as the Spanish “once” which means “eleven.”

Carmen Velasquez, director of the Alivio Medical Center in Pilsen where the majority of patients speak Spanish, believes a machine translation as substitute for a human being is an inappropriate solution.

“It’s health care. If you have the responsibility of human life, you better well know what you are doing and saying,” Velasquez said.

To read the full Chicago Tribune article, click here.

A news story out of Columbia, SC, where the Hispanic population is 14%, reports that Hispanics are not receiving adequate healthcare. Specifically, certain perceived limitations, like having a foreign accent or not knowing a doctor, are preventing Latinos from receiving the care they need.

[Latinos are] three times less likely to have a consistent source of medical care and one and a half times more likely to use the emergency room as a primary source of healthcare. Making unnecessary trips to the emergency room is one of the most common mistakes Hispanics make, and it can cost them hundreds of dollars.

The article report on some recent data from the Pew Hispanic Center:

• 46 percent say they believe their accent contributed to their poor care.
• 43 percent say they believe their inability to pay contributed to their poor care.
• 37 percent say they believe their race or ethnicity caused them to receive poor care.

A group called “Promotoras de Salud” is trying to get information out to the Latino population about where to go when sick and other resources that will help make their experience with health care more successful.

Read the full article here.