Experiences of communication barriers between physicians and immigrant patients: A systematic review and thematic synthesis

Abstract

Frequent immigration of peoples from outside often challenges various systems of any country; healthcare sector is the most confronted one. One of the most prominent reasons for this confrontation is communication gap between physicians and immigrant patients. In this systematic narrative review, we studied existing literature on physician-immigrant patient communication. We systematically searched the repositories of literature and followed some criteria to select literature. We selected 32 literatures for information extraction. Three themes emerged from the synthesis: Physicians’ viewpoint about communication barrier with their immigrant patients, Immigrant patients’ viewpoint about the communication barrier with their physicians, and Interpreter as a mitigation process of communication barrier and associated challenges. Physicians are mostly concerned about the fidelity of their conversation with immigrant patients while the Immigrant patients are mostly concerned about their culture and sometimes fearful that the physicians will misunderstand them due to lack of language proficiency. This review provides an updated summary of communication barriers that may arise between physicians and immigrant patients, and their effects on quality of care.

Keywords

• communication barriers
• immigrants
• physicians
• challenges of using interpreters