recent study<\/a> by researchers at the universities of Ottawa and Manitoba.<\/p>\nIn fact, it could be a matter of life or death.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
For allophones receiving care in their preferred language, the risk was 27 per cent lower than for those who did not.<\/p>\n
“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 \u2026 and may not have acquired native-like English proficiency,” the study suggests.<\/p>\n
Those percentages represent the difference in the rate of death across the survey period, not a change in overall deaths. <\/p>\n
The study ran into problems with sample size and called for more research on language variables in Quebec, and for Indigenous language speakers.<\/p>\n
Cardiovascular deaths down<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Reaume says that speaking the same language leads to better trust, understanding and comfort.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
Reaume said he wasn’t surprised by the study’s results because the short-term impacts were already known to researchers. <\/p>\n
The research further suggests that if language barriers can be mitigated, outcomes can be improved for linguistic minorities, Reaume said.<\/p>\n
Governments and health authorities can help, he said, pointing to health cards in his province of Manitoba that indicate which language a patient prefers. <\/p>\n
“They can go one step further and not just restrict that information to the official languages,” he said. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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.”<\/p>\n
LISTEN | Michael Reaume joins Ottawa Morning to discuss the research:<\/p>\n
Ottawa Morning9:24New University of Ottawa study on correlation between doctor-patient common language and long-term survival<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":843403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":["post-843402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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