Strategies for improved French-language health services: Perspectives of family physicians in northeastern Ontario.

OBJECTIVE To identify strategies to improve the quality of health services for Francophone patients. DESIGN A series of semistructured key informant interviews. SETTING Northeastern Ontario. Participants A total of 18 physicians were interviewed. Ten physicians were interviewed in French, 7 physicians were women, and 10 physicians were located in urban communities. METHODS Purposive and snowball sampling strategies were used to conduct a series of semistructured key informant interviews with family physicians practising in communities with a large Francophone population. Principles of grounded theory were applied, guided by a framework for patient-professional communication. Results were inductively derived following an iterative data collection–data analysis process and were analyzed using a detailed thematic approach. MAIN FINDINGS Respondents identified several strategies for providing high-quality French-language health services. Some were unique to non–French-speaking physicians (eg, using appropriate interpreter services), some were unique to French-speaking physicians (eg, using a flexible dialect), and some strategies were common to all physicians serving French populations (eg, hiring bilingual staff or having pamphlets and posters in both French and English). CONCLUSION Physicians interviewed for this study provided high-quality health care by attributing substantial importance to effective communication. While linguistic patient-to-physician concordance is ideal, it might not always be possible. Thus, conscious efforts to attenuate communication barriers are necessary, and several effective strategies exist.