Program overview :

Appropriate Virtual Care for Linguistically Diverse Communities

Provincial Health Services Authority – British Columbia

The Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA), in collaboration with Provincial Language Services, has initiated a groundbreaking project to provide safe, high-quality and culturally sensitive virtual care to patients, families and caregivers from linguistically diverse communities. Recognizing the absence of standardized resources to facilitate effective virtual communication between healthcare teams and non-English speaking individuals, the project team engaged diverse stakeholders through working groups, focus groups, interviews and surveys to develop a comprehensive guide for these interactions. This evolving resource aims to empower users in making informed decisions when utilizing virtual care.

Objective and purpose of the promising practice 

The primary goal of this promising practice is to create resources that promote the appropriate use of virtual care in healthcare interactions involving linguistically diverse communities. This includes ensuring care that is safe, high-quality, equitable and culturally sensitive.

 

 

Approach 

Engagement

This project heavily emphasized stakeholder engagement. Patients, families and caregiver partners actively participated in working groups, sharing their needs, preferences, beliefs and suggestions for improvement. This included two Spanish speaking patient partners, a Francophone patient partner, and a patient partner who is Indigenous and Deaf, ensuring a broad representation of linguistically diverse voices.

The virtual health team utilized a patient and community partnership toolkit to guide the co-design and development process. The team adopted a new model of project management, in which a patient partner was empowered to be one of the project co-leads to inform the project approach from inception to sustainment. This set a new standard for inclusive project development.

To engage provider and staff perspectives, the project co-leads also included a PLS staff member, who is Deaf, as well as working group members with expertise in in education, practice, clinical care and project management. Through surveys and focus groups, the project team gathered insight from various internal and external healthcare team members. They held monthly meetings and used Microsoft Teams software for ongoing updates and communication.

Outcomes

The virtual care resource will be launched in November 2024 with planned distribution to patient partners, team members, community partners and providers. Following the launch, a PDSA approach will be used to incorporate feedback from patient partners and clinicians. Intended outcomes include improving the resource prior to launch across the organization, increased use of interpreters during virtual visits with linguistically diverse patients, enhanced translation of documents and improved patient and provider experiences. Evaluation of the resource will follow at various intervals to closely measure the uptake of the resources and opportunities to adjust based on the evaluation objectives.

Collaboration with community members and language interpreters in a unified meeting setting proved transformative, fostering rich discussions and highlighting infrastructure limitations that hinder collaboration. An online translation tool was secured to ensure equitable participation across multiple languages. The translation tool will continue to support future projects.

Impacts and learnings

Key takeaways 

• Navigating change management and securing clinical program buy-in posed challenges, necessitating additional support for quality improvement efforts.
• External support and services should be utilized when necessary.
• Early and ongoing engagement was crucial for the project’s success, allowing ample time for meaningful connections with patient partners.
• Tailored communication and management approaches maintained high levels of engagement with patient partners.
• Further engagement with Indigenous communities needed to better understand their experiences with virtual care and language accessibility, which will inform further resource development and evaluation.

Facilitators

• Access to language interpreters through the Provincial Language Services team was essential.
• Executive sponsorship and the participation of individuals with lived experience fostered engagement and dialogue.
• Seed funding for interpretation and translation was critical to the project’s initiation.

Barriers

• Low response rates from healthcare team members.
• Variances in digital literacy affected the use of Zoom’s interpretation functionality.

This initiative by the PHSA represents a significant step forward in ensuring equitable and culturally sensitive virtual care for linguistically diverse communities, setting a precedent for future healthcare projects.

For more information:

Tina Costa
Provincial Health Services Authority
tina.costsa@phsa.ca