Overcoming language barriers in the Spanish healthcare context

Abstract

The progression towards multicultural societies impacts on the quality of communication between professionals and their clients. This chapter focuses on the analysis of communication in a specific setting, namely the Spanish healthcare system, and concludes that language is a significant barrier to optimal patient outcomes. An analysis is given of one of the approaches used to mitigate the language barriers between medical professional and patient: INTER+MED, a project which aimed to design training for, coordinate and monitor a team of interlingual and intercultural mediators working in health centres in the Madrid region of central Spain. An analysis of the data obtained from surveys of patients and professionals is presented, followed by a discussion of themes which emerged from the interpreter observation forms pertaining to specific ethnic groups