Background: The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) developed a recent accreditation standard requiring medical schools “must prepare medical students to function collaboratively on health care teams that include health professionals from other disciplines as they provide coordinated services to patients”.  Our academic tertiary medical center does not offer training for non-physician medical learners, therefore […]

Background: One in five Americans (64 million) speak a language other than English, and one in twelve Americans (26 million) speak English less than “very well”, classifying them as having limited English proficiency (LEP). LEP patients have difficulty navigating the healthcare system due to language barriers in understanding their treatment plans, communicating with providers and […]

Background: HCAHPS is a nationally standardized, publically reported survey of patients’ perspective of healthcare. However, the effect of HCAHPS reporting on hospitals with baseline low versus baseline high patient satisfaction with physicians has not been studied.  Therefore, our objective was to compare the long-term changes in the patient satisfaction with physicians in hospitals with baseline […]

Background: When people with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) access the US healthcare system, a disparity is created, leading to worse outcomes and lower quality of care.1-5 In-person interpreters are essential in circumventing these disparities, yet pitfalls to collaboration between providers and interpreters persist.6-9 This study’s goal was to assess barriers and identify opportunities for intervention […]

Background: Patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) face barriers communicating with their medical providers and understanding their treatment plans. Prior work shows that communication barriers limit LEP patients’ understanding of their discharge instructions. However, little is known about disparities in outcomes between LEP and English proficient (EP) patients. To address this gap, we measured the […]

Case Presentation: A 29‐year‐old African American woman presented to the emergency room complaining of dyspnea on exertion and orthopnea of 2 weeks' duration. Her symptoms progressed gradually over this period and worsened to include paroxysmal nocturnal dyspnea prior to admission. She also complained of chest pressure and nonproductive cough. She denied diaphoresis, night sweats, palpitations, […]