Clinical Measurement of Verbal Language Proficiency in Patients Referred to a Cultural Consultation Service (CCS).

The Cultural Consultation Service of the Jewish General Hospital has been evaluating the mental health of immigrants and refugees since 1999. As may be expected, CCS patients from linguistically diverse backgrounds need interpreter services, but how clinical decisions are made to assign interpreters to a given patient are unknown. Furthermore, there are no clinical language proficiency tools available for use in health care settings. Health care literacy tools exist, but before they can be administered to patients of diverse backgrounds, basic verbal language proficiency in English must first be evaluated. Using a retrospective sample of CCS referrals, this study will demonstrate that clinicians overestimate language proficiency in linguistically diverse patients. Then, a simple tool to measure verbal language proficiency, which can be administered quickly and efficiently in clinical settings, will be piloted on a prospective sample of CCS referrals to address this problem.