Five years ago, when Matias Bruzoni, MD, was a new pediatric surgical fellow at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford, his fluency in Spanish meant that he often accompanied other surgeons to consult with Hispanic families who spoke little English.
"I went with the attending surgeon, and would help explain the operation in Spanish, and then the family would say to me 'Great, would you mind being our surgeon?'" he recalled recently. "And I'd say, 'But I'm a fellow' and they would say 'We'd rather stay with you.'"
The families greatly valued their linguistic and cultural connection to Bruzoni. As he had more of these interactions, Bruzoni realized the hospital's entire pediatric general surgery team held a mostly untapped linguistic resource. Many of its members - including receptionists, nurse practitioners and triage staff - spoke fluent Spanish.
After Bruzoni finished his training, he organized this group of caregivers into the hospital's Hispanic Center for Pediatric Surgery, which offers patients and families the ability to receive all of their pre- and post-surgical care in Spanish. Every interaction, from registering the patient to giving post-surgical instructions, happens in the families' first language. Bruzoni wondered how this approach would compare to using trained medical interpreters, whose services are offered to all non-English-speaking families at the hospital.
A new study, published in the most recent issue of the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, shows what his research found. From our press release:
Spanish-speaking families that discussed their children’s care in Spanish reported a higher level of satisfaction and higher ratings of the quality of information they received compared with the families in the control group and those that worked through an interpreter. Spanish-speaking families rated the importance of discussing care in their native language more highly than English-speaking families, the study found.
Although socioeconomic status was not assessed in this study, Bruzoni noted that Hispanic families of low socioeconomic status may have an even greater need than others to receive care in their native language. “There is a big cultural barrier,” Bruzoni said. “Because of these patients’ circumstances, it is even more important to work with them using their own language.”
Bruzoni plans to continue studying how to deliver better surgical care to California's growing population of Hispanic children.
Previously: Stanford student earns national recognition for research on medical communication, An app to break through language barriers with patients and Advice for parents whose kids need surgery
Photo courtesy of Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford
