Mentoring for the Spanish Speaking Nurse (PDF)

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2017 in the subject Communications - Intercultural Communication, grade: 4.0, , course: Practicum, language: English, abstract: The purpose of this quantitative project was to examine if the implementation of a mentoring program for Spanish speaking nurses facilitated improvement in communication. This project focused on answering did the improved communication resulting from the mentoring program lead to improved patient interactions and ultimately improved patient satisfaction as evidenced by their Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey results. The project studied 78 nurses randomly selected from the nurses on a Southwest telemetry unit. Nurses were then assigned the role of mentor or mentee. To qualify as a mentor, the nurse had to speak fluent English have an above average employment evaluation. The director of the unit approved the mentor mentee assignments. The communication section of the HCAHPS survey was compared from the time frame in 2016 to the exact same time frame in the year previously. A statistical analysis of the data revealed there was no difference in communication by nurses based on the mentor - mentee program outcomes as demonstrated on the HCAHPS survey results. It can be concluded that the mentor program may not be cost and time effective. The study recommends that hospital educators formulate policies that support effective communication of nurses while also considering the efficient use of nurses' time and institutional financial resources.

El Paso, Texas is fewer than five miles from the United States-Mexico border and 81.2% of its residents identify as Hispanic. Many of these residents speak Spanish as their first language; the same is true for nurses working in the city and its surrounding areas. Approximately 80% of the nurses in a given unit at the Southeastern Hospital speak Spanish and 90% of the patients are English speaking. Patient satisfaction measured by the HCAHPS is low, and for this hospital it appears to result from the number of Spanish speaking nurses that serve patients in these units. Evidence suggests that difficulty communicating with patients is common for Spanish speaking nurses and those that speak other non-English languages. The result is a high turnover rate among nurses, as well as poor patient outcomes and satisfaction; these results are consistent with what has been observed at Southeastern Hospital.