Language Barriers In Health Care Research Paper

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Bridging the Healthcare Communication Gap with Language Services
Language barriers are something that occur daily in the field of healthcare. Oftentimes, doctors find that they are not able to communicate with patients because of different languages that they both speak. This can greatly hinder the communication between the doctor and the patient, which can impede the speed with which care is offered.
Unfortunately, this language barrier can quickly become something that causes a life or death situation that the doctor must contend with. To help ease this type of struggle, many hospitals have chosen to rely on language services to help bridge this gap in understanding.
What are the Dangers of this Barrier?
One of the biggest issues that this …show more content…

It is also common for them to not return to the doctor after a trip to the emergency room. Children will also suffer from this language barrier. Many with asthma will not receive the care that they need and will find themselves very ill when it could have been prevented with medical care.
Another issue that is common is that without proper communication, patients will not have the best knowledge when it comes to their medication. They are more likely to overuse or misuse medication because they are not able to understand the instructions of their doctors. Naturally, this is something that is very dangerous to patients.
What are Language Services?
With language services, doctors will have access to interpreters in a number of different formats. For example, there are times when doctors will choose to pull up a language service specialist through an app on their smart phone.
In addition to this, some hospitals have these services available on-site. Language services could also refer to translations that are given over the phone or that are written down. These different options that are available help to bridge this difficult language gap that is difficult to overcome without it.
What Languages are

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