Healthcare communication initiative from SickKids spotlights the lived experiences of patients and families who speak languages other than English

Dr. Victor Do, fourth year pediatrics resident at The Hospital for Sick Children, and Leong Centre Studentship Recipient, provides an update on research with patients and families who use language(s) other than English for healthcare communication. He highlights the expansion of his study to four new sites including North York General, McMaster Children’s Hospital, Trillium Health Partners, and Brampton Civic Hospital. 

Providing high-quality care that meets the needs of marginalized and vulnerable populations is important to achieving an equitable, high-quality health care system. Children and families who use a Language other than English (LOE) in English dominant regions for healthcare have worse health outcomes including a significantly increased risk of experiencing adverse events, longer lengths of stay in hospital settings, and receiving more unnecessary tests and investigations. Our study titled “Improving Hospital Care for Children and Families with Limited English Proficiency (LEP): A Qualitative Study” was first featured by the Leong Centre in its fall newsletter of 2022.

Since then, we have implemented a research program centered around child health equity in the pediatric inpatient setting with a focus on marginalized populations. We have completed 19 interviews with families at SickKids - there are 16 different LOE represented in our cohort, and the conversations have highlighted a number of findings including how families express not wanting to be “a burden to the team” regarding interpreter use, that they feel the need to “trust the system” more than they generally would in part due to the gaps in understanding.  A recent publication (Do et al. 2023) focuses on how to design qualitative community based participatory research studies with patients and families who use LOE for healthcare. The importance of early partnerships and fostering collaborations are highlighted.

A second publication (Do et al. 2023) in Paediatrics & Child Health focuses on the importance of understanding the lived experiences of patients and families, and suggests recommendations on how the paediatric community can work to improve their care and health outcomes, including the importance of a concerted research agenda and ensuring adequate funding for interpreter resources.

Currently, we are working on the analysis of the results from our SickKids interviews. We are excited to report that approvals to start recruitment at our other sites - North York General, McMaster, Trillium and Brampton are underway, and we hope to initiate this phase of the study at those sites shortly. Additionally, we will be launching a survey study that aims to collect information on the current policies and procedures Ontario and Canadian centers have for support families that use LOE for healthcare communication. This will as we aim to develop standardized supports for patients who use LOE and address the disparate health outcomes. Additional work is also in motion to develop a standard for the most appropriate terminologies to use in healthcare (e.g. in the medical chart) for this growing patient population group.

Being a member of the Leong Centre has provided me with an amazing community of support. The Leong Centre trainee hub and being connected with likeminded scholars and learners have been so helpful in helping me advance my research interests.

Question: What impact do you hope your research findings will have on patients?

Answer: I hope that our work leads to the health system reimagining how we support families who are marginalized due to structural and systemic barriers. Health equity cannot just be an ideal – we must work to make it a reality.