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At least 919 records · Page 51Linked to original sources
PubMed2006

Validating the utility of the Spanish version of the American Diabetes Association Risk Test.

The American Diabetes Association (ADA) Risk Test, often used for decisions to blood glucose screen or not, lacks studies reporting the reliability or validity for the Spanish version of the tool. The objective of this study is to further validate the utility of the Spanish version of the ADA's Risk Test for Latino Populations. A convenience sample of 316 Latinos participated in this study. A positive but weak statistical correlation was found between blood glucose and the Risk Test score (.138), suggesting low reliability and validity of the Spanish version of the instrument. Two internal consistency estimates of reliability techniques were computed for the Risk Test for diabetes scale items, indicating low reliability.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Organ donor registration preferences among Hispanic populations: which modes of registration have the greatest promise?

There is little debate over Hispanics' need for viable organs. Although organ donor registries can potentially assist in alleviating this need, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has called on researchers to investigate methods to maximize such potential. This research effort answers the aforementioned call by surveying Hispanics, both those who prefer to use Spanish (SP, n=239) and those who prefer not to use Spanish (NSP, n=364) about the methods of donor registration that they would most likely utilize. When provided with different options for organ donor registration, signing up by applying for a driver's license, through a place of worship, or through a doctor's office were among the most popular methods; over the telephone, tax forms, or through the use of home computer were among the least popular. Furthermore, the DHHS-suggested idea of registering via organ donor kiosks was very well received.

Acculturation↗
PubMed1998

Concerns and dilemmas of Hispanic AIDS information seekers: Spanish-speaking callers to the CDC National AIDS hotline.

Hispanic communities suffer disproportionately from the impact of human immunodeficiency virus infection (HIV). Each year, thousands of Spanish-speaking Hispanics call the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National AIDS Hotline to ask questions about HIV. During 1995 alone, Spanish line staff answered more than 29,000 calls. This article presents a profile of callers and their concerns based on a systematic sample of these calls (N = 6,933) and qualitative data. The authors triangulated quantitative and qualitative results to provide a deeper understanding of the issues and dilemmas discussed with callers. Males and females called in equal numbers, but significant gender differences were observed in both situational and content variables. Gender roles, cultural values, and anxiety strongly affect the way that callers approach information and prevention. Findings suggest that health educators need to carefully examine whether prevention programs will reinforce or challenge traditional gender roles, sexual norms, and cultural values.

Acculturation↗
PubMed2001

Food hygiene training in the UK: time for a radical re-think?

Training food handlers in the hospitality industry has been recommended by various organisations as a means of improving food handling practices and thus the safety of food for consumers. It is nearly 20 years since the first examinations for basic level food hygiene certificates were made available to food handlers in the UK. Since then little has changed in the syllabuses and in the way the questions are worded. However, the range of languages spoken by food handlers working in the UK has increased substantially since more employers are recruiting those who speak English as a second language. Training can be an unwelcome expense for managers where there is a high turnover of employees, especially amongst those for whom English is not a first language. To improve practical implementation of food hygiene theory it is time to develop a radical strategy concerning the way training is targeted and delivered in the UK, and perhaps Europe.

Communication Barriers↗
PubMed2004

Western medical ethics taught to junior medical students can cross cultural and linguistic boundaries.

BACKGROUND: Little is known about teaching medical ethics across cultural and linguistic boundaries. This study examined two successive cohorts of first year medical students in a six year undergraduate MBBS program. METHODS: The objective was to investigate whether Arabic speaking students studying medicine in an Arabic country would be able to correctly identify some of the principles of Western medical ethical reasoning. This cohort study was conducted on first year students in a six-year undergraduate program studying medicine in English, their second language at a medical school in the Arabian Gulf. The ethics teaching was based on the four-principle approach (autonomy, beneficence, non-malfeasance and justice) and delivered by a non-Muslim native English speaker with no knowledge of the Arabic language. Although the course was respectful of Arabic culture and tradition, the content excluded an analysis of Islamic medical ethics and focused on Western ethical reasoning. Following two 45-minute interactive seminars, students in groups of 3 or 4 visited a primary health care centre for one morning, sitting in with an attending physician seeing his or her patients in Arabic. Each student submitted a personal report for summative assessment detailing the ethical issues they had observed. RESULTS: All 62 students enrolled in these courses participated. Each student acting independently was able to correctly identify a median number of 4 different medical ethical issues (range 2-9) and correctly identify and label accurately a median of 2 different medical ethical issues (range 2-7) There were no significant correlations between their English language skills or general academic ability and the number or accuracy of ethical issues identified. CONCLUSIONS: This study has demonstrated that these students could identify medical ethical issues based on Western constructs, despite learning in English, their second language, being in the third week of their medical school experience and with minimal instruction. This result was independent of their academic and English language skills suggesting that ethical principles as espoused in the four principal approach may be common to the students' Islamic religious beliefs, allowing them to access complex medical ethical reasoning skills at an early stage in the medical curriculum.

Cohort Studies↗
PubMed2006

Experiences and expectations of refugee doctors: Qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: Refugee doctors constitute a potentially valuable resource for reducing the recruitment crisis in psychiatry. However, various hurdles make their route into the National Health Service (NHS) difficult. AIMS: To explore the perceptions and experiences of refugee doctors trying to practise psychiatry in the UK. METHOD: Thirty-one refugee doctors participated in qualitative interviews designed to elicit their experiences in trying to practise as doctors in the UK. Twenty were re-interviewed about 6 months later. RESULTS: Doctors identified a range of practical problems that made it difficult for them to take the required steps towards practising in the UK. These included lack of appropriate information, lack of a clear route through the system and feelings of isolation. The English language examination was seen as a particular bottleneck, as were finding clinical attachments. The psychological impact of the experience was profound. CONCLUSIONS: These findings have important implications for how refugee doctors are introduced to the practice of psychiatry in the NHS.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Treating the world without leaving your ED: opportunities to deliver culturally competent care.

When asked about cultural sensitivity, well-meaning, highly educated, and competent physicians admit that while they desire to be culturally sensitive, it is not usually a conscious element of their professional interactions. When it is conscious, they sometimes feel at a disadvantage in their knowledge base or experience. Often physicians are familiar with certain cultural practices but do not know what those practices represent in the lives of their patients; how they produce, exacerbate, or ameliorate illness; and how to function in the patient's best interest within this milieu. In acute clinical encounters, language discordance is by far the most obvious cultural obstacle to providing care. However, increasing exposure to cultural minority populations demonstrates that beyond language, a host of other factors contribute in both obvious and subtle ways to suboptimal care. This report explores some of the challenges faced by immigrant patients and their treating physicians during clinical encounters. It examines the roots of miscommunication and dissatisfaction stemming from cultural differences and expectations and suggests ways to minimize their negative effects.

Clinical Competence↗
PubMed2000

Syntactic comprehension, verbal memory, and calculation abilities in Spanish-English bilinguals.

This article analyzes the interfering effect of the second language (L2) on the first language (L1) in native Spanish speakers living in the United States. We examined 3 linguistic aspects: (a) syntactic comprehension, (b) verbal memory, and (c) calculation abilities. We carried out 2 different studies. In the 1st study, we studied syntactic understanding in 50 Spanish-English bilinguals. For all participants, L1 was Spanish and L2 was English, and all learned English early in life and had attended English schools. Results for the Spanish Syntactic Comprehension Test (Marcos & Ostrosky, 1995) were compared with the normative results obtained with 40 Spanish monolingual participants. We observed that the closer to the English syntax the sentences were, the easier it was for the participants to understand them. Participants who had been exposed to English between the ages of 5 and 12 outperformed participants exposed to English before 5 years of age. Language preference correlated with syntactic comprehension. Women outperformed men. In the 2nd study, verbal memory and calculation abilities were examined in L1 and L2 in a group of 85 Spanish-English bilinguals. Parallel versions of the different tests were administered in Spanish and English. The results indicated some significant differences between the 2 languages in several verbal learning and calculation ability subtests. Most of the verbal memory subtests were better performed in L1. Scores on tasks measuring speed and calculation accuracy were higher in the participant's native language. Best spoken language proved to be a significant variable in some verbal memory subtests performed in English but not in Spanish. We analyze implications of bilingualism in neuropsychological testing. We also present some suggestions to minimize the bilingualism effect.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Verbal fluency and repetition skills in healthy older Spanish-English bilinguals.

The influence of bilingualism on cognitive test performance in older adults has received limited attention in the neuropsychology literature. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of bilingualism on verbal fluency and repetition tests in older Hispanic bilinguals. Eighty-two right-handed participants (28 men and 54 women) with a mean age of 61.76 years (SD = 9.30; range = 50-84) and a mean educational level of 14.8 years (SD = 3.6; range 2-23) were selected. Forty-five of the participants were English monolinguals, 18 were Spanish monolinguals, and 19 were Spanish-English bilinguals. Verbal fluency was tested by electing a verbal description of a picture and by asking participants to generate words within phonemic and semantic categories. Repetition was tested using a sentence-repetition test. The bilinguals' test scores were compared to English monolinguals' and Spanish monolinguals' test scores. Results demonstrated equal performance of bilingual and monolingual participants in all tests except that of semantic verbal fluency. Bilinguals who learned English before age 12 performed significantly better on the English repetition test and produced a higher number of words in the description of a picture than the bilinguals who learned English after age 12. Variables such as task demands, language interference, linguistic mode, and level of bilingualism are addressed in the Discussion section.

Aged↗
PubMed2002

Assessment of neuropsychological function through use of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Testing Automated Battery: performance in 4- to 12-year-old children.

In this article, children's performance on subtasks from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Testing Automated Battery (CANTAB) is described. Two samples were recruited, one of which included children who spoke English as a second language. Children in this group also completed subtests from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Revision (WISC-III). Despite the fact that ESL children scored over 1 SD below the norm on the WISC-III Vocabulary subtest, there were no CANTAB performance distinctions between primary versus secondary English-language speakers. In addition, several aspects of CANTAB performance were significantly correlated with verbal and nonverbal IQ. When developmental trends were examined, findings indicated that several aspects of frontal lobe function (memory span, working memory, and planning skills) are not functionally mature, by the age of 12 years. Implications for use of the CANTAB in clinical studies are discussed.

Attention↗
PubMed2006

Early development of language by hand: composing, reading, listening, and speaking connections; three letter-writing modes; and fast mapping in spelling.

The first findings from a 5-year, overlapping-cohorts longitudinal study of typical language development are reported for (a) the interrelationships among Language by Ear (listening), Mouth (speaking), Eye (reading), and Hand (writing) in Cohort 1 in 1st and 3rd grade and Cohort 2 in 3rd and 5th grade; (b) the interrelationships among three modes of Language by Hand (writing manuscript letters with pen and keyboard and cursive letters with pen) in each cohort in the same grade levels as (a); and (c) the ability of the 1st graders in Cohort 1 and the 3rd graders in Cohort 2 to apply fast mapping in learning to spell pseudowords. Results showed that individual differences in Listening Comprehension, Oral Expression, Reading Comprehension, and Written Expression are stable developmentally, but each functional language system is only moderately correlated with the others. Likewise, manuscript writing, cursive writing, and keyboarding are only moderately correlated, and each has a different set of unique neuropsychological predictors depending on outcome measure and grade level. Results support the use of the following neuropsychological measures in assessing handwriting modes: orthographic coding, rapid automatic naming, finger succession (grapho-motor planning for sequential finger movements), inhibition, inhibition/switching, and phonemes skills (which may facilitate transfer of abstract letter identities across letter formats and modes of production). Both 1st and 3rd graders showed evidence of fast mapping of novel spoken word forms onto written word forms over 3 brief sessions (2 of which involved teaching) embedded in the assessment battery; and this fast mapping explained unique variance in their spelling achievement over and beyond their orthographic and phonological coding abilities and correlated significantly with current and next-year spelling achievement.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2005

Communication models, professionalization, and the work of medical interpreters.

A growing number of health institutions are employing medical interpreters, bilingual individuals who facilitate communication between health care providers and patients. Organizations working to establish the professional status of medical interpreting have articulated codes of ethics that prescribe a number of different roles for interpreters in their clinical work. Interviews obtained from 17 medical interpreters support the observation that the code of ethics, based primarily on a conduit model of interpreter communication, does not provide consistent guidance in clinical practice. I discuss the role of communication theory in developing improved models for interpreter practice.

Codes of Ethics↗
PubMed2006

Understanding medical interpreters: reconceptualizing bilingual health communication.

This article provides a new approach in conceptualizing bilingual health communication, emphasizing the differences between types of medical interpreters as well as the interrelationships among all participants in bilingual health communication. Confronted by the conflicting results of interpreting services in medical settings, the author used past research to explain why medical interpreters should be categorized into different categories (i.e., chance interpreters, untrained interpreters, bilingual health care providers, on-site interpreters, and telephone interpreters) so that their characteristics and interpreting styles can be better observed and understood. In addition, by recognizing that interpreter-mediated communications in health settings are dynamic situations and that all participants can influence the outcomes of the communication, researchers can start to investigate the interrelationships among all the participants and, thus, develop different strategies that will improve the quality of bilingual health communication.

Communication↗
PubMed2006

Impact of a bilingual mobile spay/neuter clinic in a U.S./Mexico border city.

There are between 4 and 10 million dogs and cats killed annually in the United States. Although there are no accurate national estimates of the number of companion animals who are sterilized surgically. Approximately 26,000 companion animals are euthanized annually in El Paso County, Texas, located on the U.S./Mexico border. In an effort to determine if a readily available spay/neuter program would be cost effective and eventually help to lower the county's euthanasia rate, a mobile spay/neuter clinic began operation for a 5-month period in 2004, using a volunteer veterinarian and paid staff. Sterilizations performed totaled 1,108: 959 dogs (372 males and 587 females) and 149 cats (50 males and 99 females). The per companion animal sterilization cost of 15.13 dollars (27.83 dollars had the veterinarian been paid) was considerably cheaper than the rate of 57 dollars per companion animal achieved by a local voucher program contracting with private veterinarians to perform reduced-cost sterilizations.

Animal Welfare↗
PubMed2000

Coping, mood, and aspects of personality in Spanish translation and evidence of convergence with English versions.

Research on stress and its influence on health and well-being has flourished for several decades, examining as predictors such psychosocial variables as personality and coping. This work now often targets multiethnic samples. Because many potential participants lack facility in English, a need exists for translations of measures into other languages. We translated 6 instruments into Spanish and studied their characteristics. Of these, 3 were measures of personality qualities: the Life Orientation Test--Revised (Scheier, Carver, & Bridges, 1994), the Behavioral Inhibition/Behavioral Activation Scales (Carver & White, 1994), and the Measure of Body Apperception (Carver et al., 1998). The others were the Brief COPE (Carver, 1997), the Center for Epidemiological Studies--Depression Scale (Radloff, 1977), and an abbreviated version of the Profile of Mood States (McNair, Lorr, & Droppelman, 1971). Correlations between English and Spanish versions in bilingual samples were all above. 72, except for the COPE's Behavioral Disengagement scale. Alpha reliabilities of the Spanish versions were comparable to those of the English versions. Correlations among measures in a sample of cancer patients were similar across languages.

Adolescent↗