A corroborative study on communication gaps among foreign patients and medical service providers in Japan.

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In this study, we conducted a questionnaire survey and two types of focus group discussions with medical service providers in order to determine how to provide safe and secure medical services to foreign patients in Japan. We investigated as follows ; 1) Status and associated factors of communication gaps between foreign patients and medical service providers(medical doctors and pharmacists), 2) Nurses' cultural competence in nursing care of patients with communication disabilities, 3) The critical issues and improvement strategies for providing safe medical services to foreign patients. It was suggested that Japanese medical service providers were weak in communication with non Japanese speaking foreign patients ; thus the quality of communication with foreign patients was poorer than that with Japanese patients. In order to resolve that problem, it was suggested to use medical interpreters who have been properly trained, and to develop cultural competencies.