Patients living in linguistically discordant long-term care homes in Ontario are at higher odds of being inappropriately prescribed psychosis medication, says a new 91ƷϳԹ study highlighting the importance of delivering care in the patient’s preferred language.
Researchers from the University of Ottawa’s and the concluded Francophone and allophone residents were more likely to experience inappropriate prescription of antipsychotics compared to English-language patients in a similar setting. Linguistic discordance occurs when care cannot be delivered in a patient’s preferred language.
“The findings of add to the growing body of evidence supporting the notion that language discordance is a social determinant of health contributing to adverse events and poor patient outcomes,” says lead author , who alongside , conducted the population-based study of nearly 200,000 long-term care residents in Ontario over the span of nearly a decade.
“The findings highlight the importance of having a diverse workforce capable of delivering culturally and linguistically concordant care.”
According to Dr. Bjerre, the effects of language barriers could be mitigated by:
- Asking individuals to specify their preferred language, which could be achieved by having this information on the patient’s health card.
- Modifying processes to favour matching of patients to facilities and providers who can provide care in residents’ preferred language.
- Ensuring multilingual staff and/or trained interpreters are readily available.
- Training staff in French to better serve official language minority communities across the country (such as the program exists at 91ƷϳԹ’s School of Pharmacy).
“Furthermore, collecting language data at the population level for both patients and health care providers – for example, by including the patient’s preferred language on the health care card, which is done in some provinces (Prince Edward Island) would facilitate evaluating the provision of language-concordant health care and how it relates to patient outcomes in different settings,” adds Dr. Bjerre, .
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