"It's the First Barrier" - Lack of Common Language a Major Obstacle When Accessing/Providing Healthcare Services Across Europe.

ABSTRACT: International migration is shaping and changing urban areas as well as impacting on healthcare access and provision in Europe. To investigate how residents of superdiverse neighborhoods put together their healthcare, we conducted qualitative interviews with 76 healthcare providers and 160 residents in four European cities - Bremen, Germany; Birmingham, UK; Lisbon, Portugal and Uppsala, Sweden, between September 2015 and April 2017. A common theme arising from the data was language and communication obstacles, with both healthcare providers and users experiencing language difficulties, despite all four countries having interpretation policies or guidelines to address language barriers in healthcare. Official interpreter services were seen to be unreliable and sometimes of poor quality, lead

SUBMITTER: Samkange-Zeeb F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8022480 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature