BILINGUAL SPANISH HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS VS. INTERPRETERS: DO

BILINGUAL HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS OFFER BETTER QUALITY OF CARE?

PI: Sharon DiFino 

Institution: University of Florida 

Department: Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences 

Time affiliated with project: 9 months 

Research focus: The study explores the impact of bilingualism on quality of care, healthcare outcomes, and patient satisfaction as it investigates the advantages of direct communication between patients and healthcare providers, or interpreters, who share a common language and comprises of two phases. In phase one, a comprehensive literature review will be conducted utilizing traditional search engines such as PubMed, Google Scholar, and hand searching. In phase 2, a bilingual survey will be designed using the Qualtrics program and distributed through various platforms such as social media targeting patient accessibility to interpreters or Spanish speaking healthcare providers. By employing this dual approach, this study seeks to obtain a better understanding of bilingualism in healthcare from both existing literature and direct perspectives obtained through survey responses.

Project Responsibilities: The project responsibilities have entailed creating a literature review, creating a poster on the research found, and planning to create a bilingual survey for phase 2 of the study.