Hispanic health

The American Medical Association has released the 2nd edition of its Official Guide to Communicating with Limited-English-Proficient Patients [608 KB PDF]. It’s a very brief guide — only 11 pages of text in a foldover 8 1/2″ by 5 1/2″ booklet — but it’s packed full of very practical information covering questions like:

• What does the term “LEP” mean?
• How do I know if I have LEP patients in my practice?
• How do language barriers affect quality of care and patient safety?
• What is the relationship between language assistance and cultural competency?
• What current and emerging strategies exist that can help physicians care for LEP patients?
• How should physician offices handle telephone calls to and from LEP patients?
• What can your office do to improve access to services for LEP patients?
• How can physician offices finance language assistance services?

Besides its own practical information, the booklet also includes useful references to further information, including:

• The Cross-Cultural Health Care Program
• National Center for Cultural Competence [note: the URL in the booklet is incorrect; this is a correct link]
• National Health Law Program – see their Library of Resources on Cultural and Linguistic Access to Health Care
• The Addressing Language Access Toolkit by the California Academy of Family Physicians
• The Health Care Language Services Implementation Guide by the HHS Office of Minority Health

Table 1 of that booklet (p. 4) emphasizes that bilingual health-care practitioners provide an option with high interpreting quality and a high patient comfort level, that is appropriate for all healthcare settings. This September 2007 article from NurseZone describes the success of one such program at the University of California-Davis Medical Center that includes nurses who are fluent not only in English, but also in Spanish, Russian, or Hmong.