Other Titles

Educating emergency department staff on LEP

Abstract

Problem: Individuals who present to the emergency department for care are initially met by registration personnel or a nurse depending on route of patient arrival. Patients who present to the emergency department that do not speak English fluently, or at all, may have communication barriers that result in delay of registration and care, and could be placed at an increased risk for poorer health outcomes. The problem statement guiding this project was, does educating emergency room staff on Limited English Proficiency (LEP) improve the identification of patients seen in the ER compared to current admission procedures?

Intervention: The intervention for this project focused on educating emergency room staff, including nurses and patient access professionals on the current statistics of LEP individuals who present to the emergency department, how to identify LEP individuals, and where to chart in the electronic medical record for a patient who identifies as LEP.

Measures: A list of qualifying records were used to pull the data through generated reports in the months of March and May of 2023 to include all patients who present to the ED for care, patients who identify as LEP, and which language was preferred during their ED encounter.

Results: The project provided statistically significant evidence the intervention increased (x-squared = 3.9288, df = 1, p = .04747) the proportion of identified LEP individuals from March (6.17%) to May (8.19%).

Conclusions: This project addressed the lack of identification of LEP individuals who present to the ED through educating ED staff on LEP. The implications for practice can extend to identify needed interpretation resources, how written discharge instructions are provided in native language, and how LEP individuals access care.

Gena Popken

Author Details

Gena Popken, BSN-RN

Sigma Membership

Non-member

Lead Author Affiliation

Nebraska Methodist College, Omaha, Nebraska, USA

Type

DNP Capstone Project

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Other

Research Approach

Other

Keywords:

Limited English Proficiency, Patient Registration, Communication Barriers

Advisor

Krumbach, Jillian

Degree

DNP

Degree Grantor

Nebraska Methodist College

Degree Year

2023

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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Review Type

None: Degree-based Submission

Acquisition

Self-submission

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