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Association Between Parent Comfort With English and Adverse Events Among Hospitalized Children
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Association Between Parent Comfort With English and Adverse Events Among Hospitalized Children

Alisa Khan, H Shonna Yin, Cindy Brach, Dionne A Graham, Matthew W Ramotar, David N Williams, Nancy Spector, Christopher P Landrigan, Benard P Dreyer and Patient and Family Centered I-PASS Health Literacy Subcommittee
JAMA pediatrics, v 174(12), pp e203215-e203215
01 Dec 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.3215
PMID: 33074313
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.3215View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)Open Access (License Unspecified),  Open

Abstract

Adult Child Child Behavior - psychology Child, Hospitalized - psychology Child, Hospitalized - statistics & numerical data Child, Preschool Female Follow-Up Studies Humans Language Male Parents - psychology Patient Safety Prospective Studies
Children of parents expressing limited comfort with English (LCE) or limited English proficiency may be at increased risk of adverse events (harms due to medical care). No prior studies have examined, in a multicenter fashion, the association between language comfort or language proficiency and systematically, actively collected adverse events that include family safety reporting. To examine the association between parent LCE and adverse events in a cohort of hospitalized children. This multicenter prospective cohort study was conducted from December 2014 to January 2017, concurrent with data collection from the Patient and Family Centered I-PASS Study, a clinician-family communication and patient safety intervention study. The study included 1666 Arabic-, Chinese-, English-, and Spanish-speaking parents of general pediatric and subspecialty patients 17 years and younger in the pediatric units of 7 North American hospitals. Data were analyzed from January 2018 to May 2020. Language-comfort data were collected through parent self-reporting. LCE was defined as reporting any language besides English as the language in which parents were most comfortable speaking to physicians or nurses. The primary outcome was adverse events; the secondary outcome was preventable adverse events. Adverse events were collected using a systematic 2-step methodology. First, clinician abstractors reviewed patient medical records, solicited clinician reports, hospital incident reports, and family safety interviews. Then, review and consensus classification were completed by physician pairs. To examine the association of LCE with adverse events, a multivariable logistic regression was conducted with random intercepts to adjust for clustering by site. Of 1666 parents providing language-comfort data, 1341 (80.5%) were female, and the mean (SD) age of parents was 35.4 (10.0) years. A total of 147 parents (8.8%) expressed LCE, most of whom (105 [71.4%]) preferred Spanish. Children of parents who expressed LCE had higher odds of having 1 or more adverse events compared with children whose parents expressed comfort with English (26 of 147 [17.7%] vs 146 of 1519 [9.6%]; adjusted odds ratio, 2.1; 95% CI, 1.2-3.7), after adjustment for parent race and education, complex chronic conditions, length of stay, site, and the intervention period. Similarly, children whose parents expressed LCE were more likely to experience 1 or more preventable adverse events (adjusted odds ratio, 2.3; 95% CI, 1.2-4.2). Hospitalized children of parents expressing LCE were twice as likely to experience harms due to medical care. Targeted strategies are needed to improve communication and safety for this vulnerable group of children.

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129 citations in Web of Science
124 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#10 Reduced Inequalities
#3 Good Health and Well-Being

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Pediatrics
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