Search Strategy for Language Barriers and Healthcare Errors

TEMPLATE ASSESSMENT 2: SEARCH STRATEGY
Student name & student number: Anjali luitel poudel 13324963
Patient
name
Step 1
explain
why your
patient is
at risk of
errors
occurring
while
they are
in
hospital
receiving
nursing
care
The patient chosen is Druhi Neupane - a 48 year old woman who has recently migrated from Nepal and has been admitted for the purpose of treating her abdominal
pain in the hospital ward. It can be observed that the Druhi is unaware of English – the primary language used by health professionals allocated for her care in the
healthcare organization. Further it can also be observed that Druhi is visited by her family on a regular basis but are in possession of minimal knowledge on English.
Taking insights from this case, it can implied that Druhi is at risk of encountering medication errors due to factors like lack of cultural competence and
miscommunication due to misinterpretation of language.
English is the preferred language of use in mainstream Australian healthcare settings, making it very difficult to conduct communication between health professionals
and patients who may not be fluent in English. In the case of Druhi, her lack of proficiency in English will not only make it highly difficult for her to share her chief clinical
complaints or understand the treatment being provided to her, but will also make it very difficult for allocated health professionals to interpret, identify and evaluate the
symptoms expressed. Hence this communication and language barrier will increase Druhi’s susceptibilities of acquiring errors due to misinterpretation and misdiagnosis
of her symptoms and the associated maltreatment of incorrect treatment provided (Nápoles et al. 2015).
Additionally, it must be noted that Druhi belongs to a cultural and ethnic background which is diverse from mainstream Australian society and is bound to be in
possession of unique cultural, religious, spiritual and healthcare practices which she may wish to be incorporated in her care plan, but may not be inquired, known or
understood by allocated health professionals. Such a lack of usage of culturally competent patient and family centred approaches to care among health professionals
will result in health professionals not understanding or incorporating the unique needs of Druhi and her family in the care plan, resulting in misinterpretation,
misdiagnosis and maltreatment and hence increases susceptibilities to errors (Genoff et al. 2016).

Step 2
Search
strategy
Screen
shot
attached
YES/NO
Proposed research question: How do incorrect language interpretation, language barriers, incorrect communication startegies and cultural incompetence among
culturally diverse, non-English speaking patients, increase the susceptibilities of errors in healthcare?
To obtain articles based on the above research question, an electronic search strategy by screening studies in the university’s ProQuest database was undertaken
using key words and Boolean operators like: adult non-English speaking AND healthcare errors AND incorrect language interpretation AND cultural incompetence. A
total of 5 articles which were relevant to the key words and published within the years 2015 to 2019 were included. Articles which were published older than this time
frame and displayed irrelevance to the key words, such as presence of child or English speaking patients in the study, along with duplicate articles, were excluded from
the study (McGowan et al. 2016).