Does the availability of a South Asian language in practices improve reports of doctor-patient communication from South Asian patients? Cross sectional analysis of a national patient survey in English general practices
Ahmed, F; Abel, GA; Lloyd, CE; et al.Burt, J; Roland, M
Date: 6 May 2015
Article
Journal
BMC Family Practice
Publisher
BMC
Publisher DOI
Abstract
Background: Ethnic minorities report poorer evaluations of primary health care compared to White British patients. Emerging evidence suggests that when a doctor and patient share ethnicity and/or language this is associated with more positive reports of patient experience. Whether this is true for adults in English general practices ...
Background: Ethnic minorities report poorer evaluations of primary health care compared to White British patients. Emerging evidence suggests that when a doctor and patient share ethnicity and/or language this is associated with more positive reports of patient experience. Whether this is true for adults in English general practices remains to be explored. Methods: We analysed data from the 2010/2011 English General Practice Patient Survey, which were linked to data from the NHS Choices website to identify languages which were available at the practice. Our analysis was restricted to single-handed practices and included 190,582 patients across 1,068 practices. Including only single-handed practices enabled us to attribute, more accurately, reported patient experience to the languages that were listed as being available. We also carried out sensitivity analyses in multi-doctor practices. We created a composite score on a 0-100 scale from seven survey items assessing doctor-patient communication. Mixed-effect linear regression models were used to examine how differences in reported experience of doctor communication between patients of different self-reported ethnicities varied according to whether a South Asian language concordant with their ethnicity was available in their practice. Models were adjusted for patient characteristics and a random effect for practice. Results: Availability of a concordant language had the largest effect on communication ratings for Bangladeshis and the least for Indian respondents (p<0.01). Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian respondents on average reported poorer communication than White British respondents [-2.9 (95%CI -4.2, -1.6), -1.9 (95%CI -2.6, -1.2) and -1.9 (95%CI -2.5, -1.4), respectively]. However, in practices where a concordant language was offered, the experience reported by Pakistani patients was not substantially worse than that reported by White British patients (-0.2, 95%CI -1.5,+1.0), and in the case of Bangladeshi patients was potentially much better (+4.5, 95%CI -1.0,+10.1). This contrasts with a worse experience reported among Bangladeshi (-3.3, 95%CI -4.6, -2.0) and Pakistani (-2.7, 95%CI -3.6, -1.9) respondents when a concordant language was not offered. Conclusions: Substantial differences in reported patient experience exist between ethnic groups. Our results suggest that patient experience among Bangladeshis and Pakistanis is improved where the practice offers a language that is concordant with the patient's ethnicity.
Institute of Health Research
Collections of Former Colleges
Item views 0
Full item downloads 0
Except where otherwise noted, this item's licence is described as © 2015 Ahmed et al.; licensee BioMed Central. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain
Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article,
unless otherwise stated.
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Patient initiated clinics for patients with chronic or recurrent conditions managed in secondary care: a systematic review of patient reported outcomes and patient and clinician satisfaction
Whear, R; Abdul-Rahman, AK; Thompson-Coon, J; et al. (BioMed Central, 1 December 2013)BACKGROUND: The cost to the NHS of missed or inappropriate hospital appointments is considerable. Alternative methods of appointment scheduling might be more flexible to patients' needs without jeopardising health and ... -
Identifying patient-centred recommendations for improving patient safety in General Practices in England: a qualitative content analysis of free-text responses using the Patient Reported Experiences and Outcomes of Safety in Primary Care (PREOS-PC) questionnaire.
Ricci-Cabello, I; Saletti-Cuesta, L; Slight, SP; et al. (Wiley Open Access, 28 February 2017)BACKGROUND: There is a growing interest in identifying strategies to achieve safer primary health-care provision. However, most of the research conducted so far in this area relies on information supplied by health-care ... -
Involving patients in patient safety programmes: A scoping review and consensus procedure by the LINNEAUS collaboration on patient safety in primary care
Trier, H; Valderas, JM; Wensing, M; et al. (Taylor & Francis for WONCA Europe (the European Society of General Practice/Family Medicine), 4 September 2015)BACKGROUND: Patient involvement has only recently received attention as a potentially useful approach to patient safety in primary care. OBJECTIVE: To summarize work conducted on a scoping review of interventions focussing ...