Safety and health immigrant paediatric oncology patients: a qualitative study

A "risky situation" is a situation that potentially can lead to adverse event. Studies describe how language barriers can have an impact on patient safety. Several studies describe a lack in management of language barriers (detecting, reporting and bridging) in the hospital paediatric care. Immigration and cancer care are rarely discussed in the paediatric literature. The present study was inspired by our previous study where it was highlighted that the paediatric nurses in a Department of Paediatric Haematology and Oncology perceived how sometimes the paediatric patient and his family were at risk. We surmise that in the case of paediatric health immigrant patients, the issue of correct understanding deserves more care than in communication among adults only.

A qualitative approach was used. 56 paediatric nurses were interviewed. Semi-structured-interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and analyzed using qualitative techniques for recurrent themes. Nurses were interviewed until data saturation was achieved. Analysis was conducted using the thematic synthesis approach.

The results include the three main themes: "language barriers" , "therapeutic education" (sub-themes: hygiene, food beverages, behavioural rules), "resources". These mentioned factors seem influence, in turn, the safety of the paediatric patient .

The results suggest linguistic barriers put at risk the whole relationship of care patient-family-nurse and is likely to jeopardize the patient's safety. Nurses are conscious they have to take under control the nursing process to care the patient and the family. Nurse would like to bridge difficulties to improve the safety for this kind of patient.