Medical Practitioners’ Perception of Cultural and Language Barriers to Patient-Centred Interaction in A Tertiary Health Institution in Ekiti State

Abstract

Interaction is central to medical practitioner-patient consultations that go on in hospitals. Patients visit hospitals with the hope of getting positive health outcomes and a lot will be done in order to achieve this. The interaction engagements that ensue between the doctor and the patient would go a long way to influence the quality of healthcare delivery to the patient. This is because good interaction will assist the patient to make certain informed decisions that can help improve the patient’s health. In recent years, emphasis is laid on communicating with patients rather than communicating to them. Good communication that is void of barrier can educate patients about their illness, its treatment and how it can affect their lives.  However, as important as communication/interaction is in hospital engagements, there are certain barriers that hinder its effectiveness. These barriers include: culture, language, gender, race and religion among others. Various health institutions serve diverse populations all over the world.  Nevertheless, Nigeria communities are more culturally and linguistically divers than any western country. Taking care of these diversities is paramount to achieving efficiency in health care delivery. How medical practitioners perceive these diversities would go a long way to influence how they will manage them for good and proper health care delivery. This paper therefore investigated how medical practitioners perceive cultural and language barriers to medical practitioner-patient interaction during hospital engagements. Two research questions were raised and three null hypotheses were formulated. The population consisted of all medical practitioners in Federal Medical Teaching Hospital, Ido-Ekiti. A sample of 120 respondents was selected through random sampling. The instrument for data collection was a questionnaire titled “Questionnaire on Medical Practitioners’ Perception of Cultural and Language Barriers to Patient-Centred Interaction” designed by the researchers. Data collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results obtained showed that medical practitioners perceived language and cultural barriers to be jeopardising interaction with patients during hospital engagement. Gender was found not to significantly influence the perception of medical practitioners. There was no significant difference in the perception of doctors and nurses and years of experience did not significantly influence medical practitioners’ perception. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that medical practitioners be exposed to more techniques for communicating with patients of various linguistic backgrounds and there is the need to foster synergy between medical practitioners and linguists in order to find better means of overcoming language and cultural barriers to interaction with patients in hospitals.