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Narrowing the Language Gap in Medical Tourism: Communications Guidelines for Physicians
Conclusion
The article series has attempted to describe some of the new, but very essential communication requirements that have arisen with the rapid growth of global healthcare and medical tourism. In general, up to now, the focus of the medical tourism industry has been to attract patients to a particular country, hospital, clinic or private practice by marketing either to or both the lower costs of procedures in your country and the advanced technology or skill of you, the physicians who perform the procedures.
Little thought has been given to how success or failure to communicate effectively with patients who come from different language and cultural backgrounds will influence your ability to use your medical expertise fully to assure positive outcomes or the patient’s satisfaction with the care and services received. Although some prospective medical tourist patients will inquire whether you and your staff will be able to treat them in their language, most will take it for granted that communication will not be a problem and neglect to ask this question. (After all, you are marketing to people from their country, aren’t you?) However, your reputation, that of your hospital or practice, and even that of your country as a venue for medical tourism will be strongly influenced by both the patient’s language access (your ability to communicate effectively) and cultural appropriateness (your ability to understand his/her needs and expectations through knowledge and understanding of his/her culture) of care.
These factors require very different expertise and skills than you have acquired through your prior medical training and experience in providing care to domestic patients. These newly needed skills can only be developed through special training in cultural awareness and accommodation to different needs and expectations, and communicating with patients from language backgrounds different from your own.
Suzanne Salimbene, Ph.D. is the President of Inter-Face International. She holds her doctorate from the U. of London Institute of Education in the Teaching English to Speakers of other languages. Dr. Salimbene developed an interest in cross-cultural business communication after living and working in many countries. She began to focus on linguistic and cultural competency in healthcare in 1993 and has written and trained exclusively in that field since 1994.
She wrote the first implementation guide to the CLAS (Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services) Standards under contract to the US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health in 2001. The first edition to her book, What Language Does Your Patient Hurt In? A practical guide to culturally competent patient care was published by Diversity Resources in 1998 and the second edition in 2005. She also published a newsletter, “Culturally Competent Care” for 10 years and has developed the content for the training game “HealthCare Diversopy” as well as a training DVD course for nurses. When she moved to Mexico in 2008 she began to utilize her vast experience in that field to assist Mexico in growing its medical tourism industry.[/vc_column_text][vc_call_to_action title=”Would you like to bring culture and language training to your organization?” button_title=”Chat with an Expert” button_link=”http://mercuryadvisorygroup.com/contact/”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]This article is part of a series by Dr. Suzanne Salimbene, a senior consultant with the Mercury Advisory Group. Dr Salimbene’s book, What Langauge Does Your Patient Hurt In? is currently being revised for 3rd edition release later this year.
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Learn more about culturally Competent Care with the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health.
In April 2013, the National CLAS Standards were re-released after undergoing a two-year enhancement initiative. This program, along with others featured on TCH, is scheduled to be under annual review for accreditation purposes and will be updated to reflect the National CLAS Standards enhancements.
To assist you during this transition, we recommend that you reference this crosswalk (PDF – 115 KB) and fact sheet (PDF – 59 KB) which will assist in understanding the numbering and organization of the re-released National CLAS Standards.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
