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The concordance of communication between patients and health professionals is essential to promoting positive health outcomes. However, concordance may be broken where language barriers exist therefore creating a need to use interpretation services. The use of interpreters to establish communication with patients having limited French proficiency LFP however, is often not used and can be problematic. Despite being offered, interpretation services are frequently underutilised, which makes communication challenging.
This problem has not received enough attention in the literature, particularly in a technologically advanced setting where solutions may be found. A cross-sectional qualitative study was used with a purposive sample that included doctors and nurses who had conducted rapid screening tests with migrants in four centers in France and who had access to interpretive services. The use of professional or ad hoc interpreters, telephone interpreters, and the equivalence of concepts such as health literacy between the HP and the interpreter were explored.
The utility of a new tool to promote communication concordance was evaluated. Twenty interviews were conducted with eleven doctors and nine nurses with a median age of 58 years 25—67 years. All participants had access to interpretive services although many did not solicit them because of 1 unawareness on how to use the services, 2 preconceived notions of the length of time to involve an interpreter and how this would add to consultation times, or 3 the proximity of an ad hoc interpreter.
Not using interpreter services could result in RDTs not being offered to immigrants. Insight from HPs allows us to better understand how both telephone and in-person interpretation are used, viewed, and why they are underused to communicate with limited French language skills patients. Our findings will help us develop a conceptual model for a digital communication tool to overcome barriers with migrant patients with limited French language skills.
