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Patients who speak to their doctors in the same language they use at home generally tend to live longer, suggests a recent study by researchers at the universities of Ottawa and Manitoba.
In fact, it could be a matter of life or death.
The study, published last month in the journal AJE Advances: Research in Epidemiology, found that conversing with your doctor in your native tongue can improve patient survival rates by up to 27 per cent.
“There hadn’t yet been a study that showed that receiving care in your preferred language has long-term health benefits,” lead researcher Michael Reaume told CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning earlier this week.
The research split patients into four groups: English speakers in Quebec, French speakers outside Quebec, people who speak Indigenous languages, and people who speak a different language at home, also known as allophones.
Using survey data from Statistics Canada going back to 2003, the researchers were able to compare the long-term survival rates of more than 50,000 patients, focusing on the language in which they communicated with their regular doctor.
“For francophones outside of Quebec the risk of death over a period going up to 15 years was 11 per cent lower if they received care from a doctor in French, compared to francophones outside of Quebec receiving care in English,” Reaume explained.
For allophones receiving care in their preferred language, the risk was 27 per cent lower than for those who did not.
“French-speaking respondents generally have greater English proficiency compared to Allophone-language-speaking respondents. Since most Allophone-language-speaking patients immigrated to Canada, some may have learned English later in life … and may not have acquired native-like English proficiency,” the study suggests.
Those percentages represent the difference in the rate of death across the survey period, not a change in overall deaths.
The study ran into problems with sample size and called for more research on language variables in Quebec, and for Indigenous language speakers.
Cardiovascular deaths down
The main factor driving the changes? A drop in cardiovascular deaths such as fatal heart attacks, one of the “two most important causes [of death] in Canada” along with cancer, according to Reaume.
Risk factors such as diabetes and smoking are often discussed at the primary care level, the study points out, unlike cancer care which tends to rely on specialists.
Reaume says that speaking the same language leads to better trust, understanding and comfort.
“I think that we sometimes have a tendency to overestimate people’s language skills,” he said. “In terms of having discussions about your health, about treatment plans, I think that the level of proficiency required is maybe a bit more involved.”
Reaume said he wasn’t surprised by the study’s results because the short-term impacts were already known to researchers.
The research further suggests that if language barriers can be mitigated, outcomes can be improved for linguistic minorities, Reaume said.
Governments and health authorities can help, he said, pointing to health cards in his province of Manitoba that indicate which language a patient prefers.
“They can go one step further and not just restrict that information to the official languages,” he said.
When it comes to bridging the language barrier between patient and doctor, Reaume said that having an interpreter has been shown to result in better care.
Artificial intelligence and automatic translation apps can help with more common languages, he said, but aren’t as effective for less commonly spoken languages “where we need the most help.”
LISTEN | Michael Reaume joins Ottawa Morning to discuss the research:
Ottawa Morning9:24New University of Ottawa study on correlation between doctor-patient common language and long-term survival