Keyword : Language, Barrier, Health Services, Communication, Multilingual
Author(s) : CHIE Esther Phubon, PhD & CHENWI Atoh Julius
Abstract :
This paper sets out to address the effects of the language barrier, resulting from the use of the two official languages (English and French), on the health sector in multilingual Cameroon where over 289 languages, including Pidgin English, exist. (Ethnologue, 2019). In Cameroon, communication is very difficult in public sectors such as the courtroom (Atoh, 2008) and in the hospitals where the doctors meet patients from various linguistic backgrounds who cannot express themselves in English, French, or Pidgin English. This paper aims at investigating the problems caused by such communication breakdown and proposes a remedy to this language barrier. Using instruments such as interviews, questionnaire, and participant observation, data for this study were collected from fifty (50) less educated and uneducated patients and ten (10) educated medical doctors from two hospitals: one public hospital (Bamenda Regional Hospital) and one mission hospital (Mbingo Baptist Hospital), both in the North West Region of the country. Our primary language variable was derived using language designations collected from patients’ registration databases. While employing both the quantitative and qualitative approaches, the data were analysed using two models and one theory which include the Transactional Model of Communication (Barnlund, 2018), the Interactionist Sociolinguistics Theory (Fishman, 1980), and the Cultural Competency Model (Brach and Fraser, 2000). The study reveals that the language barrier clearly exists in the hospitals found in both the rural and urban areas in the North West Region of Cameroon. Our findings conclude that understanding imbalances between languages can help address communication challenges across the Cameroonian healthcare sector and would reduce the number of deaths.
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