Evaluation of Language Diversity Among Orthopaedic Surgeons

Area of Science:

• Orthopaedic surgery
• Linguistic diversity in healthcare
• Patient care disparities

Background:

• Over 22% of the US population speaks a non-English language at home.
• Language barriers create disparities in orthopaedic care for non-English speakers.
• Care is often discordant when language preferences do not match provider languages.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the linguistic diversity of orthopaedic surgeons in the US.
• To compare surgeon linguistic diversity with US population linguistic diversity.
• To identify potential gaps in language concordance for orthopaedic patient care.

Main Methods:

• Cross-sectional observational study of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons database.
• Extracted data on surgeon location, subspecialty, and languages spoken.
• Quantified linguistic diversity using descriptive statistics and residuals for ideal representation.

Main Results:

• 8.28% of 19,505 orthopaedic surgeons spoke languages other than English.
• Spanish, French, and German were the most common additional languages.
• Significant disparities exist, with fewer Spanish-speaking surgeons than Spanish-speaking populations in 39 states, notably California, Texas, and New Mexico.

Conclusions:

• Linguistic disparities between orthopaedic surgeons and patients are evident.
• These gaps may lead to increased reliance on interpreters and impact care quality.
• Increasing multilingual representation in orthopaedics is crucial for equitable, patient-centered care.