Main description:

Global migration continues to increase, and with it comes increasing linguistic diversity. This presents obvious challenges for both healthcare provider and patient, and the chapters in this volume represent a range of international perspectives on language barriers in health care. A variety of factors influence the best ways of approaching and overcoming these language barriers, including cultural, geographical, political and practical considerations, and as a result a range of approaches and solutions are suggested and discussed. The authors in this volume discuss a wide range of countries and languages, and cover issues that will be familiar to all healthcare practitioners, including the role of informal interpreters, interpreting in a clinical setting, bilingual healthcare practitioners and working with languages with comparatively small numbers of speakers.

Contents:

Introduction

1. Allison Squires: Drivers of Demand for Language Services in Healthcare

2. Leah Karliner: Three Critical Steps to Enhance Delivery of Language Services in Healthcare

3. Elaine Hsieh: The Model of Bilingual Health Communication: A Theory Based Approach to Interpreter-Mediated Medical Encounters

4. Yvan Leanza. Camille Brisset, Rhea Rocque and Alexandra Boilard: Challenges and Recommendations for Work with a Community Interpreter in Mental Health

5. Barbara Schouten: Toward a Theoretical Framework of Informal Interpreting in Healthcare: Explaining the Effects of Role Conflict on Control, Power and Trust in Interpreter-mediated Encounters

6. Rebecca Schwei, Mary Rhodes and Elizabeth A. Jacobs: Understanding the Advantages and Disadvantages of the Diversity of Approaches to Overcoming Language Barriers in Medical Encounters

7. Dana Canfield and Lisa Diamond: Language Concordance between Limited English Proficient Patients and Their Clinicians

8. Gwerfyl Roberts: Breaking the Silence: Identifying the Needs of Bilingual Speakers in Healthcare

9. Francesca Gany, C. Javier Gonzalez, E. Zoe Schutzman and Debra J. Pelto: Engaging the Community to Develop Solutions for Languages of Lesser Diffusion

10. Fiona Irvine, Martin Partridge and Echo Yeung: Chinese Voices: Improving Access to Health Care

11. Ben Gray, Jo Hilder, Lindsay Macdonald, Rachel Tester, Anthony Dowell and Maria Stubbe: A New Zealand Perspective on Providing Healthcare for Patients with Limited English Proficiency

12. Lidia Horvat: Towards a New Approach for Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Healthcare: A Case Study of Developments in Victoria, Australia