JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Sweden is rapidly becoming an increasingly multicultural and digitalized society. Encounters between pediatric nurses and migrant mothers, who are often primary caregivers, are impeded by language problems and cultural differences. To support mothers, doulas, women from the same linguistic and cultural backgrounds, serve as cultural bridges in interactions with health care professionals. In addition, ICT (information and communication technology), due to its accessibility, can potentially be used to manage interactions.

Objective:

The objective of this study was to investigate the role of ICT in managing communicative challenges related to language problems and cultural differences in encounters with migrant mothers from the perspectives of Swedish pediatric nurses and doulas.

Methods:

Deep semi-structured interviews with five pediatric nurses and four doulas from a migrant-dense urban area in Western Sweden were audio-recorded, transcribed and analyzed using Thematic Content Analysis.

Results:

The results show that ICT contributes to mitigating communicative challenges in interactions by providing opportunities for nurses and migrant mothers to get distance interpreting via telephones and to interpret themselves using language translation applications. Using images and films from the Internet is especially beneficial while discussing complex and culturally sensitive issues to complement or to substitute verbal messages. These findings suggest that ICT contributes to enabling migrant mothers to take a more active role in interactions with health care professionals. This also has important implications for their involvement in other areas such as child care, language learning and integration in Sweden.

Conclusions:

The findings of this study suggest that ICT can be a bridging tool between healthcare professionals and migrants. The advantages and disadvantages of translation tools should be discussed to ensure that quality communication occurs in healthcare interactions and that health information is accessible. This study also suggests the development of targeted multimodal digital support including pictorial and video resources for pediatric care services.