Language barriers can negatively impact access to health care, quality of care, and patient health outcomes in Canada, especially for those who do not speak the same language as their health care provider.
With the objective of reducing language barriers and facilitating more culturally safe care to our program clients, Surrey team, in collaboration with Surrey Libraries, decided to organize a language support group to facilitate marginalized newcomer clients to practise medical English conversations and share their experiences in a mutually supportive and peer interactive learning setting.
A series of medical English conversation course intended for clients with advance beginner to lower intermediate English level was successfully launched in a spacious classroom located in the Surrey City Centre Library during the summer break this year.
This support group offers a safe & welcoming space for them to practice and improve their English skills, specifically related to medical conversations. We have on average 35 students attended all these four sessions in full. Their consistency in coming to the class in person every after week was solid evidence that their expectation of this event was successfully met, and their keen participation in the classes such as their enhanced motivation in engaging dialogues with peers or in asking or answering questions in class demonstrated a significant increase in their confidence in speaking medical English in public, which also increase their capacity in using English in real-life medical scenarios.
Organizing this language support group may be just a tiny step forward in addressing the systemic barriers exist to the non-English speaking immigrants, we are committed to continuing to support them to feel more inclusive and welcome on their Canadian journey.