Ng Joseph, Popova Svetlana, Yau Myra, Sulman Joanne
Department of Social Work, Mount Sinai Hospital, 600 University Ave, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Soc Work Health Care. 2007;44(3):129-43. doi: 10.1300/J010v44n03_01.
Hospitals in large cities provide services to an increasingly diverse linguistic and cultural clientele. Some strategies adopted to improve services to non-English speaking populations include the use of bilingual social workers, interpreters and printed translation tools. In order to identify gaps in culturally sensitive care in a Canadian teaching hospital, this study surveyed a consecutive sample of 279 Chinese in-patients to determine satisfaction with hospital experience, levels of information about hospital routines and awareness of on-site Chinese cultural services. Results were generally positive. However, satisfaction and information levels were significantly higher among those patients who were aware of culturally appropriate Chinese resources such as social workers, cultural interpreters, and culturally specific reference tools. Of particular interest are the 121 patients (44%) who were less comfortable with English, since awareness of culturally specific resources tended to make a greater difference to this sub-group. These results can potentially help health care providers improve services to patients and families from diverse cultural and linguistic groups.
大城市的医院为越来越多样化的语言和文化背景的患者提供服务。为改善对非英语患者的服务所采取的一些策略包括使用双语社会工作者、口译员和印刷翻译工具。为了找出加拿大一家教学医院在文化敏感护理方面的差距，本研究对279名连续入院的中国患者进行了抽样调查，以确定他们对住院体验的满意度、对医院常规信息的了解程度以及对医院内中国文化服务的知晓度。结果总体上是积极的。然而，那些知晓诸如社会工作者、文化口译员和特定文化参考工具等符合文化习惯的中国资源的患者，其满意度和信息了解程度明显更高。特别值得关注的是121名（44%）英语水平欠佳的患者，因为对特定文化资源的知晓对这一亚组患者的影响往往更大。这些结果可能有助于医疗服务提供者改善对来自不同文化和语言群体的患者及其家庭的服务。
