Culturally responsive care
Latino Medical Center will aim to connect with Hispanic patients
Kim Basset was thinking about what it was like to be hospitalized and having to undergo surgery in a country where people speak a foreign language.
The President of St. Joseph Medical Center in Houston looked into that question after talking with a physician who was having difficulty explaining a complex health issues to a patient.
“I thought how uncomfortable that must be for our patients; why can’t we have a medical general and surgical floor for Hispanic patients,” she wondered, “where we hire the personnel, nurses, doctors who are bilingual?”
In Houston, where Hispanics represent 45 percent of the population, many of whom speak Spanish at home, the idea felt natural to Basset.
Following her leadership, the St. Joseph Medical Center this fall will open a new Latino Health Center of Excellence, a groundbreaking initiative that aims to offer culturally responsive care for the its Hispanic patients, the hospital leadership said. The hospital said it will be a dedicated medical and surgical floor that will pro
vide comprehensive care, free of language barriers with cultural competency.
“We’ve got to be able to communicate better with our patients so that they are confident and comfortable, and well informed about what’s going on with them medically,” said Basset at an open house Wednesday to show part of the floor that will be dedicated to the center. “We feel pretty strongly that there’s nothing in Houston” like the center which has been in the works for about a year.
Basset said the hospital has identified some initiatives in outpatient clinics in other parts of the country. “But nothing, nothing like this that really caters to a population that speaks a particular language.”
As shown in the open house, the Latino Health Center, located on the third floor of the George W. Strake Building in the St. Joseph complex at 1919 La Branch St., looks similar to most hospital units.
The center will provide the same services and quality that patients at other units receive, except that they will be provided in Spanish, said Rennie Rogers, director of Latino Health at St. Joseph Medical Center.
He said that the concept of the center includes hiring and having all the medical personnel speaking Spanish. “But language is about culture, and that’s the true connection with our patients,” Rogers said.
“I wanted to make sure that we didn’t only provide language service, but I wanted people to feel welcome; to feel like we’re truly going the extra mile to take care of them.” For that reason, he said a challenge has been to find the right personnel who are not only bilingual but bicultural. He said the center will offer “the human connection that Hispanic patients tend to miss” in the U.S. healthcare system.
The center will also offer a dietary menu designed with Hispanic cultures in mind, and patients will have access to TV programming in Spanish, among other of its characteristics.
“For St. Joseph to go out of their way to dedicate staff and a wing of the hospital, medical professionals that are able to speak the language of our community, this is going to go a long way to improving the health of our of our community,” said Samuel Peña, chief of the Houston Fire Department who was among the community leaders present at the event.
Nora Khan, a certified principal nurse of Mexican heritage at the new center, said she is sure that it “will be a success among our community.”
With more than two decades of experience nursing Spanishspeaking patients, Kahn said that she has witnessed “the nervousness, uneasiness that people who don’t speak English feel” in a medical setting.
She said that it is typical to see many patients who barely speak with the medical personnel even when they are in pain. “I have had people who beg me to stay or cry when I finish my shift because they are scared.”
She said patients will notice the difference of care in the center. “This is a dream come true to me.”