Page 29 - ASCO Cultural Competency Toolkit

5. Partner with the community to design, implement, and evaluate policies, practices, and services to ensure cultural and linguistic appropriateness.
6. Create conflict and grievance resolution processes that are culturally and linguistically appropriate to identify, prevent, and resolve conflicts or complaints.
7. Communicate the organization's progress in implementing and sustaining CLAS to all stakeholders, constituents, and the general public.
Interpreter Use
Language access/assistance services can take the form of medical interpreters and translators, access to translated materials, and multilingual clinicians. Medical interpreter use is helpful to decrease language barriers during healthcare interactions. Professional interpreters are often used in non- healthcare industries. In healthcare, many clinical practices rely on their own limited language skills, family members of patients, or other untrained interpreters such as bilingual employees. These practices can result in omitted, edited, or other misinformation relayed to the patient. Ultimately, the patient may not receive the proper care (Woloshin et al, 1995). Providing care in a language that a family does not speak well is a known risk factor for negative effects on health outcomes, like increased medical errors or physical harm. Using a family member or friend (particularly a child) to translate should be avoided as they are more likely to edit or reinterpret information to avoid conflict or protect family members. Patients and family may also be less forthcoming if community members are present to translate (Divi et al, 2007). Ladha et al (2018) describe some cross-cultural communication tools that can be used when interacting with families and children. Although interpreter qualifications have not been standardized, it is important to use trained medical interpreters to improve the quality of healthcare interactions.
Provision of a qualified interpreter and auxiliary aids, such as braille and large print formats, is a requirement under the Americans with Disabilities Act. “
The Blueprint for Advancing and Sustaining CLAS Policy and Practice implementation guide provides
information on how to use the CLAS standards.
length and complexity of communication in assessing what is the appropriate aid or service.”
A health care provider must factor in the
(Northeast ADA Center)
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