Cargando…

Migrant General Practitioners’ Experiences of Using Interpreters in Health-care: a Qualitative Explorative Study

BACKGROUND: According to the UNHCR, 250 million people currently live outside their country of birth. The growing multicultural population poses a major challenge to healthcare professionals who aim to provide individualized, holistic care, which respects the individual’s autonomy. To ensure basic r...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Krupic, Ferid, Samuelsson, Kristian, Fatahi, Nabi, Skoldenberg, Olof, Sayed-Noor, Arkan S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: AVICENA, d.o.o., Sarajevo 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5364783/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28428673
http://dx.doi.org/10.5455/medarh.2017.71.42-47
_version_ 1782517395367133184
author Krupic, Ferid
Samuelsson, Kristian
Fatahi, Nabi
Skoldenberg, Olof
Sayed-Noor, Arkan S.
author_facet Krupic, Ferid
Samuelsson, Kristian
Fatahi, Nabi
Skoldenberg, Olof
Sayed-Noor, Arkan S.
author_sort Krupic, Ferid
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: According to the UNHCR, 250 million people currently live outside their country of birth. The growing multicultural population poses a major challenge to healthcare professionals who aim to provide individualized, holistic care, which respects the individual’s autonomy. To ensure basic rights, healthcare interventions should be guided by the value of benefiting others; individuals should be treated honestly, equally, and impartially. OBJECTIVE: To investigate immigrant doctors’ experiences of using interpreters in the Swedish health-care system. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Twenty-eight doctors, 12 men and 16 women from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia participated in four focus group interviews (FGI). The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and analyzed using content analysis method. RESULTS: The best results in the present study were achieved in situations where a professional interpreter was involved. In some cases, the doctors were forced to use relatives or a colleague to interpret, which in many cases proved to be a mistake. The consequences of poor interpretation routines included payment by mistake, a patient paying an interpreter who refused to interpret, time spent waiting for another interpreter, as well as disturbances to the daily work schedule. Finding someone who could replace an interpreter who did not show up caused time shortage and increased stress. CONCLUSIONS: Improved routines and more effective cooperation between interpreting services and health-care centers are needed in order to ensure that using professional interpreters guarantees appropriate, high quality care. Improvements are needed to provide satisfactory health-care to people with limited language skills. In order to achieve this, better education of interpreters is needed, especially regarding cultural diversity and medical terminology. These improvements present complex challenges, deserving empirical and critical reflection in order to improve the work situation for doctors.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-5364783
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2017
publisher AVICENA, d.o.o., Sarajevo
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-53647832017-04-20 Migrant General Practitioners’ Experiences of Using Interpreters in Health-care: a Qualitative Explorative Study Krupic, Ferid Samuelsson, Kristian Fatahi, Nabi Skoldenberg, Olof Sayed-Noor, Arkan S. Med Arch Original Paper BACKGROUND: According to the UNHCR, 250 million people currently live outside their country of birth. The growing multicultural population poses a major challenge to healthcare professionals who aim to provide individualized, holistic care, which respects the individual’s autonomy. To ensure basic rights, healthcare interventions should be guided by the value of benefiting others; individuals should be treated honestly, equally, and impartially. OBJECTIVE: To investigate immigrant doctors’ experiences of using interpreters in the Swedish health-care system. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Twenty-eight doctors, 12 men and 16 women from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia participated in four focus group interviews (FGI). The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and analyzed using content analysis method. RESULTS: The best results in the present study were achieved in situations where a professional interpreter was involved. In some cases, the doctors were forced to use relatives or a colleague to interpret, which in many cases proved to be a mistake. The consequences of poor interpretation routines included payment by mistake, a patient paying an interpreter who refused to interpret, time spent waiting for another interpreter, as well as disturbances to the daily work schedule. Finding someone who could replace an interpreter who did not show up caused time shortage and increased stress. CONCLUSIONS: Improved routines and more effective cooperation between interpreting services and health-care centers are needed in order to ensure that using professional interpreters guarantees appropriate, high quality care. Improvements are needed to provide satisfactory health-care to people with limited language skills. In order to achieve this, better education of interpreters is needed, especially regarding cultural diversity and medical terminology. These improvements present complex challenges, deserving empirical and critical reflection in order to improve the work situation for doctors. AVICENA, d.o.o., Sarajevo 2017-02 2017-02-05 /pmc/articles/PMC5364783/ /pubmed/28428673 http://dx.doi.org/10.5455/medarh.2017.71.42-47 Text en Copyright: © 2017 Ferid Krupic, Kristian Samuelsson, Nabi Fatahi, Olof Skoldenberg, Arkan S. Sayed-Noor http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Krupic, Ferid
Samuelsson, Kristian
Fatahi, Nabi
Skoldenberg, Olof
Sayed-Noor, Arkan S.
Migrant General Practitioners’ Experiences of Using Interpreters in Health-care: a Qualitative Explorative Study
title Migrant General Practitioners’ Experiences of Using Interpreters in Health-care: a Qualitative Explorative Study
title_full Migrant General Practitioners’ Experiences of Using Interpreters in Health-care: a Qualitative Explorative Study
title_fullStr Migrant General Practitioners’ Experiences of Using Interpreters in Health-care: a Qualitative Explorative Study
title_full_unstemmed Migrant General Practitioners’ Experiences of Using Interpreters in Health-care: a Qualitative Explorative Study
title_short Migrant General Practitioners’ Experiences of Using Interpreters in Health-care: a Qualitative Explorative Study
title_sort migrant general practitioners’ experiences of using interpreters in health-care: a qualitative explorative study
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5364783/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28428673
http://dx.doi.org/10.5455/medarh.2017.71.42-47
work_keys_str_mv AT krupicferid migrantgeneralpractitionersexperiencesofusinginterpretersinhealthcareaqualitativeexplorativestudy
AT samuelssonkristian migrantgeneralpractitionersexperiencesofusinginterpretersinhealthcareaqualitativeexplorativestudy
AT fatahinabi migrantgeneralpractitionersexperiencesofusinginterpretersinhealthcareaqualitativeexplorativestudy
AT skoldenbergolof migrantgeneralpractitionersexperiencesofusinginterpretersinhealthcareaqualitativeexplorativestudy
AT sayednoorarkans migrantgeneralpractitionersexperiencesofusinginterpretersinhealthcareaqualitativeexplorativestudy