Addressing language barriers to health care, a survey of medical services in Switzerland

Two descriptive, quantitive cross-sectional surveys including all services of internal medicine and psychiatric services examined how Swiss medical se rvices address the problem of language barriers in health care and how they respond to the high number of allophone patients. Of all the medical servi ces (MS), 244 responded to the questionnaire (Internal medicine: 166; Psych iatry: 78; overall response rate 86.6%). Half of them (51%) estimated the p roportion of allophone to the total number of patients at 1-5%. Only 4% of the MS collected statistics on the number of allophone patients (2 internal medicine, 8 psychiatric services). A third of the MS perceive communicatio n with allophone patients as significantly difficult. Only 14% often use qu alified interpreters, while 79% often use relatives, 75% often health staff , 43% often employees. Qualified interpreters are less frequently used in i nternal medicine than in psychiatry. there is an expressed need for qualifi ed interpreters speaking Albanian, Bosnian/Serbo-croat, Tamil and Kurdish. Only 11% of the studied MS have a budget for interpreters, and 17% have acc ess to an interpreter service. 48% express the need to have access to inter preter services. There is a need to raise the awareness of health professio nals on the advantages of having access to trained interpreters and on the limits of using relative as translators. This call for coordination at nati onal level, policy development and training, in order to ensure adequate co mmunication and quality care for migrants.