The Role of Clear, Accessible Written Information in Healthcare
Research by Dr. Baptiste Morel, Medical Director at BC Children’s Hospital MRI Research Facility, and his colleagues shows that written healthcare information strengthens verbal communication. It helps patients and families better understand and remember important information while also improving satisfaction and emotional well-being.
In a randomized controlled trial involving 178 pediatric outpatient surgery patients, Landier et al. (2018) found that providing parents with a written information leaflet alongside verbal explanations significantly improved comprehension and recall, increased satisfaction, and reduced anxiety associated with their child’s surgery.
These findings support integrating clear, accessible written resources into healthcare communication practices to reinforce verbal information, promote informed decision-making, and improve the patient and family experience. Although the study focused on pediatric surgery, its findings highlight the potential value of written communication tools in other healthcare settings.
A 7 Reference
Reference:
Landier, M., Villemagne, T., Le Touze, A., Braïk, K., Meignan, P., Cook, A. R., Morel, B., Lardy, H., & Binet, A. (2018). The position of a written document in preoperative information for pediatric surgery: A randomized controlled trial on parental anxiety, knowledge, and satisfaction. Journal of Pediatric Surgery, 53(3), 375–380. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpedsurg.2017.04.009
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Health Communication and Culture
Health communication encompasses interpersonal and mass communication activities aimed at enhancing the health of individuals and populations. Understanding and applying information about health issues is crucial to this process and can substantially affect health behaviours and outcomes (Ishikawa & Kiuchi, 2010). Improved Healthcare Literacy may enhance individuals’ ability and motivation to find solutions to personal and public health problems, and they can use these skills to address various health problems throughout life. The process underpinning Healthcare communication literacy involves empowerment, a major goal of health communication (Ishikawa & Kiuchi, 2010).
How was health communicated in different cultures before the era of globalization?
Health was communicated differently across cultures before globalization. In some cultures, patients were not made aware of their condition for various reasons.
Communication occurs at many different interdependent hierarchical levels of analysis (Kreps, 1988b). Multicultural communication in health care can be examined at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, group, organizational and societal levels of analysis, as depicted in the Hierarchical Levels of Multicultural Communication Model (Kreps and Kunimoto, 1994).
Culture has strong influences on both encoding and decoding processes because culture provides us with guidelines for creating appropriate messages for different situations and audiences, and also provides us with logics for interpreting and understanding different messages (Kreps and Kunimoto, 1994). As a healthcare language interpreter, I facilitate communication between predominantly foreign-born patients and medical professionals, who may also be foreign-born and educated. A healthcare environment which is described by Kreps and Kunimoto as a cultural melting pot.
I understand that effective health communication must consider the diverse cultural orientations within the healthcare system, including national, regional, ethnic, racial, socioeconomic, occupational, generational and health status differences. As a language interpreter, I apply a “two-eyed seeing” approach. This approach involves understanding and integrating multiple cultural perspectives simultaneously to facilitate effective communication. My proficiency in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese allows me to gain deeper insights into various cultural worldviews, enhancing my ability to interpret not just words, but also the meanings and contexts across cultures for patients seeking healthcare.
For example, I recently assisted a French-speaking, elderly Asian patient from Mauritius who required a healthcare team for her condition: a doctor of Indian origin, a resident doctor in training from Nigeria and a nurse from the Philippines.
This case highlights the importance of health communication, as healthcare participants must share relevant information and coordinate effectively to achieve their healthcare goals. Developing interprofessional respect, coordination, and egalitarianism can help the health care team fully utilize group members’ expertise and work together to effectively deliver care (Gifford, 1983). The greater the number of diverse groups one can communicate with successfully to achieve results, gain attitude change or reinforcement and skill acquisition or behaviour change, the greater the reduction of uncertainty and stress (Gudykungst, 1988, p. 39).
Medical professionals should also be culturally sensitive to the patient’s needs. This case exemplifies the importance of understanding not only the surface aspects of the “iceberg” model of multicultural influences on communication but also the hidden cultural influences which are not as apparent and which include: socioeconomic status, occupation, health condition, religion, sexual preference, group membership, educational background and political orientation (Kreps and Kunimoto, 1994). These hidden cultural factors can have major influences on communication in health care contexts.
The multicultural influences on modern health care are not just limited to differences in nationality, sex, age, educational background, or occupation of health care consumers and providers, but they may also act as cultural barriers to effective health communication (Kreps and Kunimoto, 1994). Developing effective multicultural relations between culturally unique participants in the modern health care system is a prerequisite to effective health care delivery (Howe-Murphy, Ross, Tseng, & Hartwig, 1989; McNeil, 1990).
Reference:
Ishikawa, H., & Kiuchi, T. (2010). Health literacy and health communication. BioPsychoSocial Medicine, 4, 18. https://doi.org/10.1186/1751-0759-4-18
Kreps, G.L., & Kunimoto, E.N. (1994). Effective communication in multicultural health care settings. Thousand Oaks, CA:
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