basic information
THE INITIATIVE PROMOTER’S PERSPECTIVE
The County Hospital Villach (LKH) lies in a central position in the Alpe-Adria region and that is why they have to deal with about 3000 foreign patients every year most of them coming from the neighbouring countries, Italy und Slovenia. Because the cross-border health care system must not encounter unjustified obstacles a medical emergency agreement was signed between Carinthia, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Veneto, so that in cases of emergency near the border, patients should be brought to the nearest hospital that would provide the best and fastest medical care. Italian emergency personnel would not have to wait for their Austrian colleagues to rescue patients and the other way round thus, avoiding the waste of precious time. Communication difficulties quite often related to language problems between patients and the medical personnel might already occur in the early stages of treatment of foreign patients, that would lead to patients’ being less looked after, less informed about the range of medical services and there is insufficient preventative medical thinking. As a result the following consequences in the every day activity of a hospital can be traced: patients will be seen more than once by a doctor because of difficulties in recording the patient’s history (case record), recommendations for treatment are not always followed, the patient would spend more time in hospital as necessary, longer and supplementary work operations resulting in higher costs, etc. In order to prevent such problems and to provide an optimal medical treatment and security to the patient cross-border cooperation and interculturality are important factors.
The main goal of the programme is to be able to provide optimal healthcare through the excellent treatment and information of foreign patients. Its aim is to ensure not only verbal understanding but also an understanding at social and intercultural level. It is vital to learn about different healthcare systems and the way patients are looked after in other countries in order to improve the medical treatment of foreign patients. A greater mobility of staff within the EU should also be ensured. By learning foreign languages barriers should be overcome, medical staff should develop a better understanding for people coming from different cultures in order to better integrate the patients’ wishes and needs in the health care system and treatment. At the same time their work should become more effective, thus being able to offer optimal medical services.
The Programme „Sprache für Gesundheit – Gesundheit ohne Grenzen“ ,“ Language for Healthcare – Healthcare without Borders„ was initiated by the County Hospital Villach (LKH Villach). Partnerships were set up among some hospitals of the regions Friuli Venezia Giulia, Veneto and Jesenice that implied an exchange of medical staff. Thus, a network of medical institutions was created whose main goal was to strengthen the intercultural cooperation.
Language trainers and experts in languages have worked together in order to develop scripts and CDs, which are tailored to the special needs of the medical professions and are used in the in house language courses. A multilingual guiding system of patients as well as information brochures, forms of admission and consent were written in a few languages. An active part is taken also by the hospitals’ interpreters and medical staff who can speak foreign languages. They contribute to the clearing up and effective communication with foreign patients.
Quality assurance: there is an ongoing evaluation of the learning and teaching process, approaches that would lead to improvement are being constantly developed and integrated in the every day activity of the hospital. Through the cooperation with native speakers and the introduction of other methods of learning foreign languages, such as coaching or psychodrama teaching has become less stressful and a very good teaching/learning atmosphere is in place. In addition, methods such as tandem and learning partnerships are being used.
The success of the programme is demonstrated by the great number of medical staff who have registered for language courses since it started: 620 for Italian and 120 for Slovenian.
The exchange programme of staff with other hospitals from Friuli Venezia Giulia, Veneto and Slovenia is very popular among the medical staff from Villach county hospital (LHK Villach) and more and more people want to take part in it.
A multilingual guiding system of patients as well as information brochures, forms of admission and consent have already been integrated in the every day activity of the hospital. Internal and external interpreting services are also highly appreciated by the different departments of the hospital.
The qualitative evaluation of the programme is done by administering a questionnaire to foreign patients after their stay LKH-Villach.
Through ongoing evaluation of the language learning process certain problems and weaknesses can be identified at an early stage and improved. New teaching materials are constantly designed and a wider range of didactic methods are used, such as tandems and learning partnerships and new methods are being developed and introduced in everyday use,
eventually the cross-border health care system must not encounter unjustified obstacles because of language and cultural barriers.
The theme of the ELL award competition was in 2008 „My, your, our Languages – Language Learning as a Prerequisite for Intercultural Dialogue and Social Cohesion“. The programme’s aim is to ensure a better intercultural dialogue between patients and medical staff through the introduction of innovative language learning methods and competences in foreign languages tailored to the needs of the medical professions. Not only verbal communication with patients is of great importance in the medical sector but also to understand the patients’ needs and wishes. By raising awareness of the medical staff towards a better intercultural cooperation and communication their social competence will be strengthened, too. The preset criteria of the competition, such as: to consider aspects of language learning, to aim towards qualitative and quantitative improvements, to motivate to teaching/learning foreign languages or the European dimension were being met by the project.
The application process consisted of completing a detailed application form i.e. project description, descriptions under other criteria and further project documents.
A multilingual guiding system of patients as well as information brochures, forms of admission and consent have already been integrated in the every day activity of the hospital. Internal and external interpreting services are also highly appreciated by the different departments of the hospital.
The project drawn by LKH Villach won the ELL award for innovative language projects in 2009. Besides the interest expressed by the media, the implementation of the tasks set in the project was of utmost importance. Its aim was the improvement and ongoing development of language teaching/learning and the strengthening of the intercultural competence by setting up exchange programmes, organising language courses, applying new, innovative teaching/learning methods (for ex. learning via skype), intercultural awareness raising seminars, as well as a multilingual information system for patients.
The initial expectations, i.e. an obvious improvement of the language learning process and the development of the intercultural competences have been fully achieved.
The submitted project must not belong to the „routine offer“ of an institution.
The implementation of the project must be minutely described in the application form.
The project must meet the set criteria.
It must:
• be comprehensive
• provide added value to the respective context,
• be new und creative,
• contain an European dimension (cross-border contacts)
• be transferable on other contexts.
It should further correspond to the theme of the national competition in order to win the ELL award.
To communicate with colleagues (information-brochures, language courses, respectively etc.)
Ongoing evaluation (feedback)
THE NELLIP NETWORK’S PERSPECTIVE
The NELLIP Network selected the project „Sprache für Gesundheit- Gesundheit ohne Grenzen“/“Language for Healthcare – Healthcare without Borders“
for its consistency with the political priorities of the European Commission in the field of language learning.
Its aim is to ensure not only verbal understanding but also an understanding at social and intercultural level. A greater mobility of staff within the EU is also ensured.
The theme of the ELL award competition was in 2008 „My, your, our Languages – Language Learning as a Prerequisite for Intercultural Dialogue and Social Cohesion“. The project’s aim is to ensure a better intercultural dialogue between patients and medical staff through the introduction of innovative language learning methods and competences in foreign languages tailored to the needs of the medical professions. The preset criteria of the competition, such as: to consider aspects of language learning, to aim towards qualitative and quantitative improvements, to motivate to teaching/learning of foreign languages or the European dimension were being met by the project.
Comments on this Case Studies
Date: 2014.10.20
Posted by Marina (Romania (Prosper ASE))
Message: Very good idea! It can be implemented not only in multilingual regions, but also in any other country, focusing on widely spread languages; patients and medical personnel need at least minimal input in different languages.