According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 56.7 million people, or 18.7% of the U.S. population, who have disabilities. A significant number of these individuals report problems seeing, hearing, thinking, and making decisions,65 which impact their ability to communicate. Additionally, 3.71 % of this population report that they are deaf or hard of hearing, and may require accommodations to receive health care (e.g., sign language interpretation services).
The literature cites patient-provider communication as a contributing factor to health care disparities, including documented differences in the way practitioners communicate with patients based on race, ethnicity, primary language spoken, and other demographic factors.3,47-49
This crosswalk lists components of linguistic competence, provides examples of beliefs that reflect both explicit and implicit biases, and cites concrete practices to employ in your health care settings to help mitigate such biases.
Now learn about how you can apply linguistic competence to your practice to address biases. See a crosswalk (PDF)* that lists components of linguistic competence, provides examples of beliefs that reflect both explicit and implicit biases, and cites concrete practices to employ in your health care settings to help mitigate such biases.
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