Measuring Health Equity (family medicine)

Nurse : hi mrs.
Family : hi
Nurse : I’m Cleo. I’m the social worker here. I’m just gonna go over a few questions with
you as part our pre-surgical admitting process.
Family : okay, but I just gave all my information
Nurse : okay, yeah I understand thanks so much this is different information so we already
have all your basics like your address and your health card and emergency contact
information. So it won’t take very long I’ll give you a pamphlet that our hospital just
produced to go over some of the frequently asked questions about what we’re gonna go over
today and if you have any questions you can always ask me and I’m happy to answer
whatever comes up.
Family : okay
Nurse : ehm, so the questins are around language, race, ethnicity, income.
Family : I’m pretty sure that’s legal
Nurse : well it’s not illegal and in fact it’s encouraged especially when we’re gonna use that
information to promote equity and for quality assurance purposes and in fact we can use that
information program planning and development, service planning and if patients have unique
needs that we want to make sure that we’re meeting them. So it’s very helpful for us to learn
more about our patient population.
Family : who’s gonna be able to see my information?
Nurse : only the people in your circle of care otherwise that’s kept confidential and
sometimes it might be used for research and in which case that we’ll all be grouped together
with lots of other people’s information with no identifying, data attached to that.
Family : okay, I’m sorry to be difficult I just. I’m feeling really sick and I’m really nervous
about this surgery so.
Nurse : yeah, I understand so we’ll get through this as quickly as possible and get on your
way. So, I’m gonna give you actually a copy of our questions you can follow along that’s
probably the easiest way to answer them. Some of the questions there’s a lot of choices. So
the first question is what language would you eel most comfortable speaking in with your
healthcare provider.
Family ; um I feel all speaking English but if you have to contact my emergency contact my
mom’s gonna need an interpreter she speaks Arabic.
Nurse : Arabic, okay thanks so much. I’ll just make a note of that and were you born in
canada ?
Family : no.
Nurse : okay, and what year did you arrive?
Family : nineteen. Are you asking me if I’m a citizen ?
Nurse : No, we just collect this information t helps us again to get to know our patient
population better and if there’s any services available to you based on what you share then we
can cater to those needs?
Family : okay 1999.
Nurse : okay thanks. Our next questions is which of the following best describes your racial
or ethnic?
Family : I’m sorry.
Nurse : we asked this questions because we do know that certain ethnic groups are
vulnerable or more vulnerable to certain diseases like aboriginal population is more
vulnerable to diabetes. So, by collecting that information we’re better able to service their
needs and we also knw that health outcomes sometimes do vary beetween ethnic groups and
we want to understand. If thats happening here and if it is to try and figure out why ?
Family : okay, um I guess black African.
Nurse : okay.yeah.. alright. The next questions is on disabilities. Do have any of the
following disabilities, no disabilities, chronic illness , developmental disability , a learning
disability?
Family : I I have a learning disability and hearing loss.
Nurse : and hearing loss.. okay thank you. And what is your gender ?
Family : female.
Nurse : female. In your sexual orientation ?
Family : I’m straight the street .
Nurse : thanks so much. And what was your total family income before taxes last year ?
Family : um... what do you mean by family income ?
Nurse : that’s the total income earned by a group of people living together as a family ?
Family : well, I have to.
Nurse : okay that’s not problem and I’m just gonna ask a few more questions and one of them
is what language would you prefer to read your healthcare information in and the reason
we’re asking in because when you come in for surgery often we give you some written
information instructions for care at home so if someone’s going to be providing that care for
you. If they need that in another language?
Family : yeah.. so I’m Arabic.
Nurse : yeah.. okay thanks and the last questions I have is often when people come in for
surgery we like to plan for spiritual care so if you want to indicate your religious or spiritual ?
Family : I don’t really see how that’s relevant my god I’d prfer not to prefer not to answer.
Nurse : okay all right so thanks so much for spending the time to fill this out it really does
help us to improve services for everyone.
Family : okay that’s wrong.
Nurse : okay great