Alexander Bischoff

University of Geneva | UNIGE · Institute of Global Health

Healthcare services face increasing challenges to provide accessible care to an equally increasing diversity of patient populations. This is clearly re-flected in the linguistic diversity of people living in Switzerland and can be seen most plainly in the country's public hospitals. After a literature review on language barriers in clinical service...

Book chapter on a spiritual care training programme for informal caregivers

Background: Twenty-five years ago, the need for health care interpreting in Switzerland increased due to the sharp influx of asylum seekers from war zones and countries of political unrest. Due to complex health needs, there was a need to move away from using volunteers as interpreters towards qualified interpreter services. Methods: A historica...

Zusammenfassung Innerhalb des vom schweizerischen Nationalen Forschungsprogramms 74 „Gesundheitsversorgung“ geförderten Projekts „Die spirituelle Dimension in der Schmerzbehandlung“ wurden 37 narrative Interviews von chronischen Schmerzpatientinnen und -patienten aus dem deutschen Projekt „krankheitserfahrungen.de“ untersucht. Im Rahmen einer Sekun...

Background: In 2007, the Tanzanian government called for improvements in its primary health care services. Part of this initiative was to accelerate the training rate for nurses qualified to work in rural areas. The aim of this study was to reflect on the issues experienced whilst establishing and implementing a faith-based organisation (FBO) nurs...

Background In 2007 the “Crisp Report” on international partnerships increased interest in Northern countries on the way their links with Southern partners operated. Since its establishment in 2007 the Division of Tropical and Humanitarian Medicine at the Geneva University Hospitals has developed a variety of partnerships. Frameworks to assess these...

Costs of language barriers among asylum seekers

Patient-provider communication, in particular physicians' ability to listen to their patients, and support them in making difficult lifestyle changes, is an essential component of effective diabetes care. Clinical communication around diabetes can be especially challenging when language barriers are present, and may contribute to poor diabetes mana...

In this age of migration, many societies are characterized by linguistic and cultural diversity. Public institutions, such as health care systems, face the challenge of integrating new arrivals, immigrants, refugees or asylum seekers, into the host society. The purpose of this study was to examine how interpreters see their work within the context...

The aim of this study was to explore differences in health care costs for asylum seekers from countries experiencing violent conflict and those from countries experiencing no violent conflict. METHDODS: Data were collected from a representative sample of refugees in an urban Swiss canton who were assigned to a Health Maintenance Organisation that c...

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the prevalence of self-reported cardiovascular risk factors differs between immigrants and Swiss nationals. This study is a secondary data analysis of the Swiss Health Survey 2002, a cross-sectional survey. In total, 19,249 individuals living in Switzerland were included. The prevalence of hypert...

Dealing with pregnancy, childbirth and the care of newborn babies is a challenge for female asylum seekers and their health care providers. The aim of our study was to identify reproductive health issues in a population of women seeking asylum in Switzerland, and to examine the care they received. The women were insured through a special Health Mai...

Language barriers have a major impact on both the quality and the costs of health care. While there is a growing body of evidence demonstrating the detrimental effects of language barriers on the quality of health care provision, less is known about their impact on costs. This purpose of this study was to investigate the association between languag...

Due to international migration, health care professionals in Switzerland increasingly encounter language barriers in communication with their patients. In order to examine health professionals' attitudes and practices related to healthcare interpreting, we sent a self-administered questionnaire to heads of medical and nursing departments in public...

Public health specialists and clinicians alike agree that Humanity faces a global pandemic of chronic diseases in the 21(st) century. In this article we discuss the implications of this pandemic on another global issue, the health workforce. Because both issues are particularly acute in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), we will focus on this region and use...

To assess the availability of equipment and the staff's knowledge to prevent Mother-To-Child Transmission (PMTCT) in rural healthcare facilities recently covered by the national PMTCT programme in Cameroon. In eight districts inventories of antiviral drugs and HIV test kits were made on site, using a standardised check-list. Knowledge of HIV and PM...

Although the focus of health care for people seeking asylum in Western European countries is usually on communicable diseases, there is little data about the general health care need of this population. In this study, we investigated the actual burden of disease among asylum seekers. Data were collected from a Swiss Health Maintenance Organisation...

Abstract: Cervical cancer screening is cost-effective and reduces both the incidence and mortality of cervical cancer. This study examined variability in the self-reported use of the Papanicolaou (Pap) test among women from six immigrant groups living in Switzerland, a country with an immigrant population of 20.5%. This study is a secondary analys...

It has been argued that asylum seekers (AS) consume more health care resources than the local Swiss population. In this study we compare the health care costs of a group of AS who attended an outpatient clinic (OPC) at the University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland, between 2000 and 2003 with a control group of local patients attending the same OPC....

Early detection of breast cancer plays a crucial role in survival, and in most developed countries immigrant women present for treatment at a later stage of the disease. Compared to the indigenous population, immigrant women have a lower uptake of breast cancer prevention services. The situation for immigrant women in Switzerland is compounded by t...

European cities are characterized by increasing numbers of foreign-born and foreign-language speaking inhabitants. The resulting cultural and linguistic diversity presents a number of challenges to health-care services. This paper describes a European initiative aimed at improving hospitals' responses to the health-care needs of migrants and ethnic...

The aging of the population and the rising prevalence of chronic diseases mandate improved collaboration among different health professionals. Interprofessional training is one way to improve it, because it encourages health professionals to learn with, from and about one another and respects the integrity and contribution of each profession. Few m...

More than 20% of people living in Switzerland are immigrants, defined as people with foreign nationality. This study examines health disparities between the main immigrant groups in Switzerland and the majority Swiss population. Epidemiological analysis of the 2002 Swiss Health Survey (SHS): the SHS contains health-related information about 19,706...

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the prevalence of self-reported cardiovascular risk factors differs between immigrants and Swiss nationals. Design and Sample: This study is a secondary data analysis of the Swiss Health Survey 2002, a cross-sectional survey. In total, 19,249 individuals living in Switzerland were inc...

Research suggests that doctor-patient communication patterns and patient satisfaction are influenced by gender. However, little is known about the effect of gender in consultations with foreign language-speaking patients and in interpreter-mediated consultations. The objective of the study was to explore the effect of doctor-patient gender concorda...

Swiss hospitals are characterized by an increasing diversity, in the sense of personal and social differences such as including origin, gender language, skills, age, lifestyles and social status. Diversity is a challenge for hospitals. It is crucial to language barriers and migration and their clinical consequences. In spite of a trend towards inte...

Die Kliniken der Schweiz sind immer mehr von Diversität geprägt. Diversität bedeutet hier das Vorhandensein von persönlichen und gesellschaftlichen Unterschieden, unter anderem auf Grund von Herkunft, Geschlecht, Sprache, Fähigkeiten, Alter, Lebensformen und sozialem Status. Diversität fordert Kliniken heraus. Entsprechend gilt es, Sprachbarrieren,...

Social changes in European societies place migration and cultural diversity on the European political agenda. The European initiative Migrant Friendly Hospitals (MFH) aims to identify, develop and evaluate models of effective interventions. It has the following objectives: To strengthen the role of hospitals in promoting the health of migrants and...

This paper presents the findings of cross-sectional national surveys on how Swiss hospitals address the problem of language barriers in health care and how they respond to the high number of allophone patients (i.e. patients who do not speak the local language). Half of the 244 hospital services responding to the questionnaire estimated the proport...

The objective of this study was to determine whether language barriers during the screening interview affected the reporting of asylum seekers' health problems and their referral to further health care. Seven hundred and twenty-three standard screening questionnaires, administered by nurses to asylum-seekers at the time of entry into Geneva/Switzer...

Communication between physicians and patients is particularly challenging when patients do not speak the local language (in Switzerland, they are known as allophones). To assess the effectiveness of an intervention to improve communication skills of physicians who deal with allophone patients. 'Before-and-after' intervention study, in which both pa...

To determine how the use of trained and ad hoc interpreters during a medical screening interview affects referral to medical and psychiatric care. We reviewed 319 structured interviews conducted by nurses with asylum-seekers from Kosovo during a systematic medical screening at time of entry, consisting of questions about health conditions, past exp...

Diss. Naturwiss. Basel (kein Austausch). Literaturverz.

This small-scale study attempts to examine the languages spoken in medical consultations during a one-month period in an outpatient clinic in Geneva and the ways health professionals use to communicate with their allophone patients, in particular by using interpreters. Patients of foreign origin accounted for 58% of all the consultations during the...

Two descriptive, quantitive cross-sectional surveys including all services of internal medicine and psychiatric services examined how Swiss medical services address the problem of language barriers in health care and how they respond to the high number of allophone patients. Of all the medical services (MS), 244 responded to the questionnaire (Inte...

Die in diesem Beitrag vorgestellten Forschungsresultate stammen aus einem Projekt, welches im Rahmen des Nationalen Forschungsprogramms "Integration und Ausschluss" (NFP 51) des Schweizerischen Nationalfonds durchgeführt wurde (www.nfp51.ch).

Die vorliegende Machbarkeitsstudie informiert über die Verwendbarkeit und Tauglichkeit von bestehenden Datenbanken für die Evaluation der Gesundheit von MigrantInnen und arbeitet verschiedene Szenarien zum Aufbau eines Monitorings des Gesundheitszustandes und –verhaltens von MigrantInnen aus. Szenario 1 schlägt vor, eine schon existierende Gesundhe...

Wie steht es mit der Verantwortung, sich mit dem Gesprächspartner communis – «gemein» – zu machen, wenn der fremdsprachig ist? Wie wird die Verantwortung für die Kommunikation wahrgenommen, wenn Sprachbarrieren bestehen? Und wie sieht diese Verantwortung im Gesundheitsbereich aus? Im Universitätsspital Genf wurde dies im Rahmen eines Pflegequalität...