Hello everyone,
One of the Think Cultural Health standards is to provide language assistance to patients who have limited English proficiency or have other communication needs at zero cost to the patient (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, n.d.). The facility I work at uses a tablet called Stratus to communicate via Facetime calls with an interpreter. I work in interventional radiology, and we use Stratus in pre, intra, and post-op areas. It is especially helpful when communicating instructions to the patient. We also use it to keep the patient comfortable and tell the translator what we are doing step by step, so the patient understands. We also use it to communicate discharge instructions. We use Cerner at the facility I work at, and we can print discharge instructions in multiple languages, which is also helpful. Another Think Cultural Health standard the facility I work at has improved upon is partnering with the community to implement and evaluate policies related to cultural and linguistic appropriateness (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, n.d.). We use a scoring system called HCAP to review patient satisfaction after discharge to make appropriate changes to improve the patient’s experiences. One major change the facility has made is open visitation during the day in the ICU. Many patients stated that they wish their families could be there more especially in instances when English was not the patient’s primary language. We also allow one visitor in our pre and post-op areas now.
I think conducting assessments throughout the patient’s stay would be helpful. The HCAP scores help us to improve the patient’s next visit and future patients’ experiences. But what about the current patients? I think we could simply improve our patients’ experience by asking them if there is anything we can do or provide to improve their stay within the restraints of enforced policies and procedures already in place. One of the Code of Ethics Provisions states that we should advocate for patients no matter their family, group, community, or population status (American Nurses Association, 2021). I think when caring for our patients we should be culturally mindful and use our critical thinking skills to best care for them.