Advancing Concerns of Spanish-Speaking Physical Injury Survivors: Equitable Trauma Care System Service Delivery

Objective: Few investigations have focused specifically on engaging Spanish-speaking patients in early post-injury comparative effectiveness trials. The goal of this study was to identify and categorize hospitalized Spanish-speaking injury survivors' posttraumatic concerns. Method: A secondary analysis of baseline data collected as part of a larger randomized comparative effectiveness trial was conducted. Participants were 22 male and female Spanish, non-English, speaking survivors of intentional and unintentional injuries, ages ≥ 18. At baseline, while hospitalized, each patient was asked to describe the nature and severity of their post-injury concerns. Patient concern narratives were audio-recorded and later transcribed. Raters coded patients' transcribed concerns into content domains. The associations between patient self-reported concern severity and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms assessed with the PTSD Checklist and depressive symptoms assessed with the PHQ-9 were also ascertained. Results: The concerns of Spanish-speaking patients were reliably categorized into previously described content domains (i.e., work and finance, physical health, social, psychological, medical, and legal domains). The composite Kappa statistic across domains was 0.83 (95% Confidence Interval = 0.74, 0.92). Spanish-speaking patients also expressed novel concerns, including immigration, discriminatory experiences, and Coronavirus pandemic, related concerns. The number of severe patient concerns was highly correlated with PHQ-9 depressive symptom levels (r = 0.52, p < .05). Conclusions: The concerns of Spanish-speaking trauma survivors can be readily elicited and reliably interpreted. Future research could integrate concern narrative elicitation and amelioration into stepped care intervention procedures in order to engage diverse Spanish-speaking injury survivors and advance equitable trauma care system service delivery.