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Get this
Joint Commission Roadmap
 Advancing
Effective Communication, Cultural Competence, and Patient- and Family-Centered
Care: A Roadmap for Hospitals is a monograph developed by The
Joint Commission to inspire hospitals to integrate concepts from
the communication, cultural competence, and patient- and family-centered
care fields into their organizations. The Roadmap for Hospitals provides
recommendations to help hospitals address unique patient needs, meet
the new Patient-Centered Communication standards, and comply with
existing Joint Commission requirements. Example practices, information
on laws and regulations, and links to supplemental information, model
policies, and educational tools are also included. The Patient-Centered
Communication standards will be presented in a separate appendix
that provides self-assessment guidelines and example practices for
each standard.
Make
the Case for Quality Language Service
 Need
help arguing for quality language services within your organization?
Here's a resource to help you make your case. Funded by Robert Wood
Johnson, this PowerPoint from the National Language Services Network
is downloadable here.
Among the research-backed premises of this piece is that poor doctor-patient
communication results in more diagnostic procedures, more invasive
procedures, and more over-medication. Only 16 percent of Asian-American
non-English speaking regard information received during a doctor's
visit as easy to understand, this presentation reveals. Then again,
results for English speakers aren't great either — only 57
percent say their doctor is easy to understand.
Multiple
Languages at Medline Plus
 Check
out the new look of Medline
Plus, an online service of the National Library of Medicine and
the National Institutes of Health. The entire site has been redesigned.
Highlights include:
Get County
Demographic Profiles
Demographic characteristics and socioeconomic status can influence a person's
health behaviors, affect access to health care, and indicate an increased likelihood
of certain health conditions. Stratis Health has developed the Culture
Care Connection County Profiles to help you learn more about the community
you serve, so you can develop and deliver culturally sensitive services.
These profiles show the characteristics of individual counties,
their economic development region, Minnesota statewide, and the nation.
Each report contains data on:
- Demographics: age, gender, race, foreign born
- Socio-economic status: income, education and occupation
- Health status data: birth rate and morbidity
Free: A Health Lit Test Tool
Here's a free
bilingual (English and Spanish) screening tool that
identifies patients at risk for low health literacy. The tool, developed
by Pfizer with University of Arizona and North Carolina health literacy
experts, can be administered in a clinical setting in just three
minutes. The test result provides information about the patient that
allows providers to adapt their communication practices and get better
health outcomes.
This tool assesses general
reading and number skills, yielding an overall estimate of health
literacy. Unlike other instruments,
it
can be administered in about three minutes and is available in
both English and Spanish. The complete package includes tips
for providers
on producing easy-to-understand materials, and links to readability-testing
applications.
Here's Help
for Hispanic Clients
 Children's Defense Fund (CDF)-Minnesota recently launched a Spanish language
version of its popular Bridge
to Benefits website. CDF seeks to improve the economic stability of low-income
families by helping connect them to public work support programs and tax credits.
The site uses a simple screening tool to help individuals and families determine
their eligibility for:
- MinnesotaCare
- Medical Assistance
- General Assistance Medical Care
- Energy Assistance Program
- Food Support
- School Meal Program
- Child Care Assistance
- Earned Income Tax Credit
- Working Family Credit
- Women, Infants and Children (WIC Program)
The site also includes guidelines for how to apply, and downloadable
applications. To learn more, visit the website and click on 'En Espanol'
in the left-column menu.
Using
Interpreters: A Common Glitch
Interpreters are a common part of the medical environment these days. But how
many providers use them to best effect? When researchers presented UCLA medical
students with best practices on using interpreters, then tested them eight weeks
later, they found that the simple matter of where to position the interpreter
in relation to the patient was a common error with negative effect on patient
satsfaction.
Instructing the interpreter to sit behind the patient helps sustain
eye contact between clinician and patient. But even after training, seven out
of ten students forgot or ignored this best practice. See the complete article, Working
with interpreters: how student behavior affects quality of patient interaction
when using interpreters.
Literacy:
Not Just a Patient Problem
For a deeper look at the health literacy issue, check out this article, Health
Literacy: Achieving Meaningful Use for Patients, in Minnesota Physician by
Exchange member Lane Stiles.
Stiles, director of Fairview Press, makes the point
that literacy is a two-way street. Consistently communicating with patients in
a manner they cannot understand is its own form of health illiteracy.
Without the inclusion of health educators and patients in the design
and development of electronic health record systems, the gap in intelligible
communication with patients will only increase, Stiles warns. This
is timely and essential reading within any organization implementing
an electronic records.
New Vietnamese Videos
to View Online
New Routes to Community Health offers an interesting set of videos
in Vietnamese with English subtitles that provide quick, easy and
sensible patient education
on the doctor/patient relationship, and on high blood pressure. Find the videos
here:
While you're there, take a spin around the New Routes site. It offers
and deep and entertaining collection of videos and more that address
the concerns of immigrant patients.
Download a
Free Health Literacy Toolkit
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is offering a free
Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit, available for web-viewing
or as a download. The
toolkit offers specific actions your organization can take to make health information
more understandable to all patients. It is designed for all levels of staff
in adult and/or pediatric primary care.
The toolkit includes:
- A Quick Start Guide
- The Path to Improvement, which outlines six steps to fully implement
the toolkit
- Twenty short tools to identify and address areas that need improvement
- Links to Internet resources
- Sample forms, posters, PowerPoint presentations, and worksheets.
Download
the toolkit, or view
an online version.
Get Help
with End-of-Life Issues
Hospice Minnesota's Opening Doors to Multicultural Communities is a state and
national resource for hospice and palliative care providers facing challenging
multicultural end-of-life situations. You can find the group's easy-to-read brochure,
What is Hospice?, translated into Hmong, Spanish and Somali, at the Hospice
Minnesota website.
While you're there, take a look at an broad range of resources that
will help increase your general cultural competency when dealing
with death and dying issues. You'll also find a deep collection that
addresses the specific needs of Hmong, Muslim, African American,
Native, Jewish, Latino and Somali people on the group's Multicultural
Resources page.
Check
It Out: A Rich Source of Video
 Looking
for cross cultural care videos to educate both you and your patients?
Take a look at the New Routes to Community Health video library, available here.
You'll find numerous short pieces for recent immigrants, in Cambodian,
Hmong, Lao, Vietnamese, Somali, Russian and Spanish, plus a host of other
languages. Topics range from sexually transmitted disease to a discussion
on why Somali men take their coffee with double cream and double sugar.
New Routes is a Madison, Wisconsin-based group that works to improve
the health of immigrants through immigrant-created media. In addition
to a Minneapolis/St. Paul collaborative, New Routes works with immigrant
groups in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland, Philadelphia
and San Francisco.
Get Emergency
Info in ASL, Braille
 Help
special needs patients be prepared for emergencies with video and
downloadable print information from the Northeast Texas Public Health
District, available for free
use at this link. ASL interperters present information on food
safety, flooding, storms, infectious disease, basic first aid and
general emergency preparation.The videos include an English language
voice over, plus text. Also available are Braille formatted and large
print emergency preparedness documents.
Get the Word on Language Access
 Amid
growing concerns about racial, ethnic and language disparities in
health care, the Joint Commission and the federal government's Office
for Civil Rights have released Improving Patient-Provider Communication,
a video on language access in health care organizations.
The video identifies tools that health care organizations can use
to build effective language access programs. It also addresses the
obligations of health care organizations concerning translation of
written documents. Watch
the video here.
Free Cultural Competence Training Tools
Free courses with CME, CE or CNE creit for physicians & pharmacists
sponsored by the US Office of Minority Health (OMH) offer the latest
resources
and tools to promote cultural competency in health care.
They include A Physician's Practical Guide to Culturally Competent Care,;
Culturally Competent Nursing Care: A Cornerstone of Caring. Learn more
here.
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