Manage Your Speech to Save Time and Be More Effective with Telephone Interpreters

Posted by Marcia Carteret, M. Ed. on Jan 31, 2013 in Immigrant and Refugee Health, Non-English Speaking Patients, Patient Compliance, Special Topics, Talking to Patients | 0 comments Communication in health care settings is inherently challenging, even when providers and patients/families share the same cultural background and speak the same language. Consider the following: Health care professionals speak “medicine.” The complex technical nature of their language doesn’t always translate easily into plain English. Adding to the challenge of translating medical...
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Eliciting Quality Patient Responses in Cross-Cultural Care

Posted by Marcia Carteret, M. Ed. on Mar 23, 2011 in Blog, Key Concepts in Cross-Cultural Communications, Non-English Speaking Patients, Patient Compliance, Special Topics, Talking to Patients | 0 comments The cultural worlds created by humans are not controlled by universal laws of science; each culture operates according to its own internal dynamic. Even members of a given culture acquire most of what they know in the process of growing up. Relating to other people isn’t learned the way, for example, disease theory is learned. So culture can’t be distilled into learned facts and doctors...
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8 Tips for Communicating with Limited English Proficiency Patients

Posted by Marcia Carteret, M. Ed. on Oct 21, 2010 in Immigrant and Refugee Health, Key Concepts in Cross-Cultural Communications, Non-English Speaking Patients, Patient Compliance, Special Topics, Talking to Patients | 0 comments Many of the private practices I have visited for the purpose of cross-cultural training are lucky to have staff and providers on their team who speak Spanish and other foreign languages. However, some practices are seeing patients from such diverse cultural backgrounds that it is impossible to have staff and providers capable of understanding all the languages of these patients. During...
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