We are pleased to announce that Dr. Victor Do, Leong Centre Studentship Recipient, has been awarded the PSI Foundation’s Resident Research Grant to expand his work on the “Improving Hospital Care for Children and Families with Limited English Proficiency (LEP): A Qualitative Study.” Victor provides an update on the expansion of this project to new sites including McMaster, North York, Trillium, and Brampton here.
Language-based inequity in health care is a risk factor for poorer access to care, decreased healthcare utilization, and adverse health outcomes. Current census data indicates that 12.7% of Canadians predominantly speak a language other than French or English at home. Over 24% of Canadians report a mother tongue other than English or French. A James Lind Priority Setting Partnership study found that the second most important unanswered research question in Canadian pediatric hospital medicine was “what methods of communication are most effective between patients, caregivers, and health care providers in a general paediatric inpatient unit?”
Our study strives to develop an understanding of the lived experiences of families with LEP around hospitalization of their child and how the healthcare system can be improved to provide higher quality of care by conducting a multi-centre qualitative study at Ontario children’s and community hospitals. Lived experience research will further awareness and understanding, and fosters knowledge and competencies to support children and families with LEP. Secondly, we will conduct an environment scan that surveys Ontario pediatric inpatient units to identify practices, policies, and procedures currently in place to identify and support patients and families with LEP during hospitalization. This will help to identify patient-identified gaps in our current healthcare delivery system and inform the development of interventions and policies to improve care delivery among this group. This work will also advance work on health equity in pediatric hospital medicine by addressing the ongoing disparity in research for underrepresented populations in Ontario.
Question: What have you learned so far from your project?
Answer: Our work thus far has reinforced the importance of developing meaningful partnerships. These have been central to our ability to develop a novel protocol to conduct a qualitative study with patients and families with LEP.
