Language Barriers in Nursing: A Case Study at King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz University Hospital

Nursing Leadership 1
NURSING LEADERSHIP
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Nursing Leadership 2
Nursing Leadership
Introduction
Nurses with effective communication skills have an important role in reducing the stress
linked to hospitalization of both patients along with their families. Effective communication has
become more and more documented as a primary element in effective healthcare outcomes.
Effective communication has an impact in enhancing health institution through increasing the
satisfaction of the patient, providing excellent care to all the patients and one may avoid
readmission as long as there is better communication between the multidisciplinary team and the
patient (Polster, 2018, pp. 28). These studies have offered convincing evidence of the
unconstructive effects of language barriers on provision of nursing services between nurses
English and those facing language barriers, such as Arabic nurses, especially in Middle-East
countries like Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, the healthcare workforce is primarily staffed by
international nurses that constitute 67.7 percent of the entire populace of registered nurses
(Paternotte et al., 2015, pp. 420). The lack of communication amongst health providers,
especially nurses results in medical errors that may lead to serious injuries or unanticipated
death.
On the other hand, misunderstanding would occur since many barriers like language,
speech, and fears, particularly new nurse graduates (Schwei et al., 2016, pp. 38). Also,
depression, anger, improper body language, and technology may be considered to be
communication barriers in the healthcare setting that has multicultural teams. Healthcare offered
to citizens of Saudi Arabia (especially nursing care is hugely delivered by foreign nurses, and in

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the mainstream is non-Arabic speaking, coming from diverse cultural backgrounds. The 2006
Ministry of Health Annual Report reported that Saudi Nurses comprise 27 percent of the nursing
workforce across the nation. This situation has resulted in linguistic diversity and large language
barriers between nurses and patients (Meuter et al., 2015, pp. 371).
The paper will examine the current state of communication, and impacts of language
barrier at King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz University Hospital (KAAUH). KAAUH is a hospital
facility that is situated in Riyadh, which is the capital city of kingdom Saudi Arabia. The facility
has multi-nationality staff such as South- African, Pilipino, Malaysian, Indian and Saudi nurses
that has resulted in ineffective communication among nurses resulting in poor quality service
delivery and miscommunication. Finally, the paper will provide recommendations towards
eliminating the language barrier at KAAUH.
Background/Current State
In King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz University Hospital (KAAUH) situated in Riyadh, the
capital city of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) have multidimensional nurses, like Malaysian,
South Africans, Pilipino, Saudi, as well as Indian nurses. The mainstream of the nurses in the
hospital facility are Pilipino and the official languages in the hospital are either Arabic or
English. The hospital’s capacity is three hundred (300) beds because of the limited beds; the
hospital serves the students who are studying at Princes Nora University and the staff is under
KAAUH, or PNU. Consequently, many students want to be served by the hospital, but the
hospital limited spaces for the students and patients at the same time, which has made the
hospital to establish a University Medical Centre (UMC). UMC serve students in the region only

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and if they require referral or a transfer to the emergency department, nurses would perform this
based on the physician order.
Furthermore, the number of staff nurses in the university medical centre is sixteen
comprising the nurse manager, where they have Pilipino origin except two Saudi nurses. The
challenge here is that these nurses in the hospital facility communicate mainly in their own
language-Tagalog. In addition, the two Saudi nurses always remind the Pilipino nurses to
communicate in English so that they may understand each other each time they communicate
(Paternotte et al., 2015, pp. 422). In some instances, the facility has different many departments,
like infection control, as well as quality department that evaluate the knowledge of the staff
through asking them some questions and the answers or the performance of the nurses will
impact the unit grading, particularly if they do not perform well.
The main challenge at this point is that no one informs earlier the Saudi nurses to prepare
for the evaluation session. They are seen reading some papers and discussed between themselves
in their own language-Tagalog and whenever the Saudi nurses asks them about the discussion,
there response is not clear , such as they are just reviewing the policy and they will not say
exactly what they will do with the patients. In the same day, the visiting appointment, the team
leader would tell the Saudi nurses that the quality department or infection control staff will be
visiting for evaluation of the unit; they will claim that they do not have adequate time to review
policy, mission, or vision whilst they have been reviewing the policy. This means that the two
types of nurses must initially read all the policies and procedures of the hospital that imply that
the Saudi nurses must be informed earlier, and involved in the discussion that is supposed to be
in English language. The other challenge is to endorse patient between them in Tagalog