Bridging the language gap: a co-designed quality improvement project to engage professional interpreters for women duing labour.

Conclusion Improving interpreter use in high-intensity hospital birth suites is possible with supportive leadership, multidisciplinary co-design and within a framework of quality improvement cycles of change.What is known about the topic? Despite Australian healthcare standards and policies stipulating the use of accredited interpreters where needed, studies indicate that services fall well short of meeting these during critical stages of childbirth.What does the paper add? Collaborative approaches to quality improvement in hospitals can significantly improve the engagement of interpreters to facilitate communication between health professionals and women with low English proficiency.What are the implications for practice? This language services initiative has potential for replication in services committed to improving effective communication between health professionals and patients. PMID: 27568077 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Australian Health Review - Category: Hospital Management Authors: Tags: Aust Health Rev Source Type: research