As the Limited English Proficient (LEP) patient population continues to grow significantly in the United States, healthcare providers find themselves facing challenging language barriers when providing care for these patients. To provide high quality care, providers must find ways to overcome the language gap impeding on the patient-provider relationship. Without the appropriate means of communication, LEP patients face health inequities, poorer health outcomes, patient safety issues, reduced patient satisfaction, and lack of access to health services. The COVID-19 pandemic amplified these disparities and magnified the challenges in providing equitable care for the LEP population. There have been legal and local strides taken to address the language gap in healthcare. Many institutions made efforts to ensure access through strategies like identifying and documenting LEP patients preferred language and ensuring provisions for access of these services. Despite these changes professional interpreters use remains low. There are many reasons for the under-utilization of medical interpreters by healthcare professionals including expense of translating and interpreting services, lack of appropriate time to gain access to an interpreter, and the heavy reliance on ad hoc interpreters. There is a large body of research dedicated to increasing access to interpreter services but the degree at which utilization increases is still minimal. There is little research on ways to empower LEP patients to increase utilization of professional interpretation services.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/45830 |
| Date | 24 March 2023 |
| Creators | Paulino, Grisel |
| Contributors | DiPetrillo, Melissa, Weinstein, John R. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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