Background: Racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare safety have persisted for decades, particularly for patients with language barriers. Previous studies have investigated the frequency and nature of safety events impacting patients with language barriers; others have proposed solutions to fix them. A gap analysis, however, of how we are currently addressing safety issues and why these efforts have not been effective is lacking.
Method: This analysis uses reports from a patient safety event reporting system. Reports contain information regarding no-harm (near miss) events and events where harm may have reached the patient. Reports occurring with patients with a preferred language other than English were extracted and analyzed to determine whether the language barrier contributed to the safety event, the language barrier was mentioned in the resolution, and themes were mentioned for addressing language barriers.
Results: A subset of 1553 events pertaining to non-English-speaking patients were first categorized as "likely" (3%), "plausibly" (10%), or "unlikely" (87%) related to the patient's language barrier. Second, events related to the patient's language barrier were categorized as directly addressing (19%), indirectly addressing (3%), not mentioning (69%) the language barrier, or containing insufficient information to determine whether the language barrier was addressed (7%). Third, thematic analysis revealed that the most common methods for addressing language barriers included presenting issues to interpreter services and subsequent use of interpreter services.
Conclusions: This study found that it is challenging to determine the direct role of certain social determinants of health (e.g., language barriers) in safety events. In many cases, the language barrier was not addressed in the event report. Furthermore, when the language barrier was addressed, solution themes typically involved weaker, less sustainable suggested actions.
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