University Nursing Report: Minimizing Language Barriers in Healthcare

This report, prepared by a nursing student, investigates the significant impact of language barriers on communication within healthcare settings. The research examines the challenges faced by enrolled nurses in delivering quality care due to language mismatches between patients and healthcare providers. It explores the need for research in this area, highlighting how ineffective communication can lead to misdiagnoses and hinder patient-nurse relationships. The study hypothesizes that tools for language interpretation can improve care and proposes methods like questionnaires, surveys, and video recordings to gather data. The report discusses related disciplines like linguistics and analyzes data from hospitals to identify ways to minimize language barriers, such as recruiting bilingual staff, training interpreters, and using universal symbols. The findings emphasize the need for further research, the strength of the study in identifying solutions, and the reliability and validity of the methods used. Ultimately, the report concludes that addressing language barriers is crucial for ensuring effective communication, accurate diagnoses, and improved patient care.

Running Head: Minimizing language barriers 1
Minimizing language barriers
Student’s Name
Institution
Date

Minimizing language barriers 2
Acknowledgement
I would like to express my gratitude to my lecturer ( Name) for giving me this golden
opportunity to research on this topic of minimizing language barriers. This helped me in
knowing very many issues related with language barriers in hospitals. Secondly, my gratitude
goes to my parents who sacrificed a lot of their resources for me to finalize this project. Thank
you my friends for enabling me accomplish this project on the given time frame through your
ideas that were really substantial. Thank you for helping me gather all the information I needed
for this paper that made it unique.
A lot of thanks
Merylin Malik
Minimizing the language barrier when communicating with clients
Introduction

Minimizing language barriers 3
As an enrolled nurse, research about minimizing the language barrier when communicating with
clients can be of very great help. The enrolled nurse shall be able to make effective
communication that can help him/her make the right conclusions of a patient case reported and
make the right diagnoses. It shall help in seeking information and clarification of health issues
between a nurse and a patient, (Babatunde, 2013).
Research need in this area
Research in this area is because there are very many challenges that enrolled nurses face in
hospitals and even the community that hinders them from delivering quality health care. One of
the challenges is ineffective communication. Ineffective communication in this area is because of
a language mismatch between a client and the nurse. This has led to the making of the wrong
diagnoses because of misunderstanding. Minimizing the language barrier shall enable the
creation of a good patient-nurses’ relationship which shall lead to the quality treatment of a
patient, (Clement, 2017). Carrying research in this area shall enable the investigation of the ways
of minimizing these barriers for own knowledge extension and strengthening the quality of care
offered to patients. This action can lead to reduced doubts of the condition under treatment.
The study hypothesis
This study hypothesizes that there exists no relationship between ineffective communication and
the dumb and that reduced language barrier can be enhanced via various tools that can lead to
quality care. The tools for language interpretation are highly encouraged to be used in hospitals
especially when there is a language mismatch between a patient and a nurse. This intervention
may help in understanding, assessing the client's needs and their concerns that can maximumly
lead to the creation of a good diagnosis. An in-person medical interpreter may be used to help a

Minimizing language barriers 4
good communication between a nurse and a client, (Collier, 2012).clients may view this topic
positively because it shall help in good treatment in hospitals or any other treatment setup, an act
shall enable maintained patient's rights to quality care, ("Medical Battery: When Patient Rights
Conflict with Quality of Care," 2017).The political issues that at times affect the quality care of
patients regarding communication barriers are where nurses are supposed to learn multiple
languages. This is politically emphasized but it has not been put into practice since
nurses/medical practitioners are conversant with English and their other local languages. The
majority of the medical practitioners who cannot understand the patient's language, may use a
tool for interpretation in case of a dumb client/one facing communication challenges or use in-
personal language interpreters to help in getting a glimpse of the patients' needs.
Objective of the study
The main objective of this study is to establish ways of minimizing the language barrier when it
comes to communicating with clients. Two areas related to this topic that shall be discussed is
how language barriers affect clinical communication and how language barriers and
miscommunication arise in medical setups between a health practitioner and a client, especially
when a weaker language is used by one of the speakers. This shall be done by using a survey
method to rate the effectiveness of communication and video recording shall be done in
inpatients and outpatients departments at three hospitals in Brisbane. Participants shall fill in
questionnaires for a background that shall all be analyzed and the data tested for validity after
which conclusions about the communication issue shall be drawn. The videos recorded shall be
transcribed and presented in qualitative and quantitative analysis to come up with the used
language elements that pose communication problems, and how patient to practitioner
relationship is affected by the language concordance and discordance.

Minimizing language barriers 5
Other discipline related to the research issue
The other discipline of study related to this issue is linguistics. Linguistics enables the learning of
diverse languages in society. Linguistics shall lead to high quality practical and intellectual skills
of people and thus, in this case, it can help in developing experiments of different languages of
different people. Through linguistics, it shall be simple to learn how an alien can easily grasp a
particular society's language, (Stork & Widdowson, 2014).
Methods of data collection
The two methods that shall be used in data collection include questionnaires and survey methods.
In this case, questionnaires are beneficial because they are an easy method to use and that they
ensure uniformity across all the respondents during the process of data collection. Questionnaires
do not put pressure on the respondents and cover a wide area to ensure a good sample
representation. They enable a researcher to get the special type of response that they want,
(Blanchet & Lam, 2012). The survey method is advantageous over the other methods because
they can easily be administered over the respondents and the researcher can easily come with it
as compared to other methods of data collection. Surveys also are very cost-effective especially
when a paper-based survey is being done and surveys can be done from anywhere for example in
online platforms. They enable the researcher to ask numerous questions that lead to good
flexibility when analyzing the collected data and reduces geographical dependence ("Surveys,
Advantages, and Disadvantages of," 2017).
Earlier research shows that Communication problems result in clinical settings when speakers
use semantic and syntactic message elements and appropriately packages it while the listener has
the intention of making inference of the conveyed message. This is called a psycholinguistic

Minimizing language barriers 6
approach, (Groot & Hagoort, 2017). secondly, there is another theoretical approach for this
study where Framework of Communication Accommodation Theory where the comparison
between the language – congruent and language discrepant is compared, (O'Halloran, Worrall,
Toffolo, & Code, 2019). This framework helps in examining various patient-practitioner
dynamics of communication especially when one of the speakers uses L2. Research shall
enlighten on how communication comprehension is affected by language discrepancy of a
particular party, (Zhang, Xiao, & Luo, 2015. Data were collected in three hospitals in the Metro
South Brisbane area, based on their patients' demographic composition, size, and departmental
range. Life recording shall be done when communications are being done by the nurse with the
inpatients and the outpatients. Recordings were also done via made appointments with a nurse
who knew more than three languages. Language Background questionnaires were given to
members ready to participate in the research and be allowed to choose the language they feel
comfortable with. (either English, simplified Chinese or the traditional Chinese). Survey
questions were given to all the respondents. The recorded conversations data was used to
produce metrics used in comparing Language-Based Questionnaires, the surveys and the
recordings for qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Through the qualitative analysis,
language accommodation was looked at and how specific adverb phrases are used when
discussing the risks of health. Ethics approval of all the methods used was done by the necessary
bodies in the three research hospitals. Case-control studies were used in helping determine the
way patients' treatment was affected by diverse languages between the health practitioners and
the patients. Cross-sectional surveys were also used to make inferences about the patients with
communications challenges during the survey. This helped in understanding the challenges faced
by people with communication disabilities, (Cammarata, 2018). Cohort studies were as well used

Minimizing language barriers 7
to identify how the language mismatch affected patients during the making of clinical
consultations, (Hammoudeh, Gadelhaq, & Janahi, 2018). This was done at different times using
different clients and different health professionals. From the above-analyzed data, it was
concluded that there exist a lot of language barrier impacts which affect the quality of care at a
very high extent. This proposal on how to reduce language barriers of communication made and
tested from the research include hospitals to recruit bilingual staff who can help in translation
when communication issues arise, expose nurses to language assessment tests that can enable
them to know more than three languages, train volunteers to be used as in-person interpreters
when language issues arise and use universal symbols proposed for healthcare purposes.
Assessment tools for standardized language can as well be used, (Baraldi & Luppi, 2015). The
miscommunication that may arise includes the client's information about the nature of their
problem and the ability of the nurse to find the right diagnosis.
Relevance of the used methods
I find that the methods used were relevant because the information was tested and collectively
analyzed, from where the right conclusions about how to reduce language barriers were made.
This shall help in creating understanding between a health practitioner and a patient for efficient
and quality care.
The information found
The information found was that there are several cases of language barriers experienced in health
facilities and can be minimized in several ways as discussed earlier. The found ways include
training volunteers, use of bilinguals, exposure to language assessment tests, using trained
interpreters and assessment tools for Standardized language.

Minimizing language barriers 8
Conclusions based on findings
Based on my findings, I can conclude that the language barrier is a common challenge faced in
health facilities and can be minimized by several ways that can lead to quality service to patients.
The articles I would like to keep include the article about how to minimize language barriers in
health facilities, (Baraldi & Luppi, 2015) and the impacts of miscommunication to quality
client's care during consultations (Hammoudeh, Gadelhaq, & Janahi, 2018).,
How to improve duty to care?
Duty of care to patients can be made effective when these methods are used. Patients information
shall be eloquently recorded and the correct cases reported shall be analyzed for diagnosis, right
interventions, and treatment. All this shall sum up to quality care, (Ali, Rasheed, & Naz, 2018).
Need for further research
Further research is needed to identify how clinical transfers affect treatment regarding the
language barrier.
Comparing and contrasting
Currency (Baraldi & Luppi, 2015) (Hammoudeh, Gadelhaq, &
Janahi, 2018).,
Study findings how to minimize language
barriers in health facilities
impacts of miscommunication to
quality client’s care during
consultations
Strength of the study The aspect of minimizing the
language barriers
How consultations are affected by
miscommunication

Minimizing language barriers 9
Relevance to objectives Ways of minimizing language
barriers were identified
Ways of how consultation was
affected by miscommunication
were identified.
Reliability Reliable Reliable
Validity Survey measures Survey measures
Benefits Reduced language barriers Reduced miscommunication
Risks
Feasibility associated
information with
Training nurses on the ways
of reducing language barriers
Using bilinguals to aid
communication .
Conclusions All the identified ways of
reducing language barriers
can be reduced through
enlighten and self-dedication.
All types of people should be
assisted in getting the right
treatment.
References

Minimizing language barriers 10
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