Diversity
Interpretation
Language Barriers Terminology
100

These are the two official languages of Canada.


What are English and French?


100

This is the difference between interpreters and translators.


What is that interpreters translate spoken language orally, while translators translate written language?


100

This emergency department patient-flow process depends heavily on accurately communicating symptom acuity, chronology, and red-flag features across languages.


What is acuity stratification?


200

These are the top five non-official languages spoken in Canada.


What are Spanish, Mandarin, Punjabi, Cantonese, and Tagalog?



200

These are at least three ways professional medical interpretation can be accessed at institutions with Language Line.


What are: over the phone, video, in-person, interpreter on wheels, Zoom, computers, tablets, smartphones, ipads


200

This evidence-based communication strategy verifies patient understanding by requiring information to be restated in the patient's own words.


What is closed-loop communication?


300

These are the three most common Indigenous languages/dialects in Treaty 1.


What are Anishinaabemowin, Cree, and Dakota?


300

This type of interpretation support would be used for a deaf non-English speaking family seeking emergency care for their baby.


What is dual medical interpretation?

I.e. a sign language interpreter and a spoken language interpreter


300

This sociolinguistic phenomenon may lead clinicians to incorrectly assume adequate medical comprehension based on a patient's conversational proficiency.


What is false fluency bias?


400

This term describes the use of simplified language, visual aids, and confirmation strategies in emergency medicine to improve communication with patients who have limited understanding of the dominant language.


What is plain language?


400

This patient-safety issue occurs when a patient leaves with an incorrect understanding of discharge instructions because of language barriers.


What is miscommunication?

(Other answers acceptable)

400

This patient-safety phenomenon occurs when linguistic discordance contributes to a lower emergency severity classification than clinically warranted.


What is language-mediated undertriage?


Studies have shown that patients facing language barriers may experience lower-acuity triage scores, delays in care, and increased communication-related safety risks in emergency departments.

500

This term describes biased assumptions about a patient's intelligence, compliance, or credibility based on their accent or English proficiency.


What is linguicism?


500

This term describes relying on a patient's family member to interpret instead of a trained medical interpreter.


What is ad hoc interpretation?


500

This interpretation-related communication failure involves the unintended exclusion of clinically meaningful information during multilingual emergency encounters, potentially altering diagnostic reasoning or management decisions.


What is a clinically significant omission?