Healthcare Quality Summit: Building the Health Care Workforce of the Future (Part 1 of 2)

[BilingualHealthcare]

Regarding healthworkforce diversity, there need to be more conversations around language skills. With fewer about 1% of RNs and MDs nationwide who speak medically-competent Spanish, for example, the mismatch with the ~ 10% of the patient population who speak Spanish as a first language is huge.

Assuming that interpretation will address the language barriers is naive. Translated conversations take about 50% longer than direct conversations, a time sink for RNs and MDs that impacts care.