Enhancing healthcare communication for Sinophone citizens: an interdisciplinary approach to professional training in healthcare

The presence of a broad spectrum of ethnic minorities within contemporary societies engenders a nuanced multicultural milieu, wherein individual interactions are profoundly shaped by disparate cultural and linguistic frameworks. This complexity profoundly affects the healing journey of patients from foreign backgrounds, as each culture has unique perspectives on health, illness, and treatment based on their experiences and resources (Watson & Krieger, 2020). Transcultural care aims to provide accessible treatment to patients from various migratory backgrounds, promoting socio-healthcare integration through effective communication, improving healthcare outcomes and fostering inclusive healthcare environments (Santos et al., 2023). Through an interdisciplinary approach rooted in Health Communication theory (Harrington & Record, 2023), the research project endeavors to comprehensively examine the social, ethical, communicative, and relational dynamics within practitioner-patient interactions (Jin, 2022). Integrating corpus-based terminology methodologies (Brookes et al., 2022; Hunston, 2022), along with socio-anthropological investigations targeting the Sinophone community and healthcare professionals, the research aims to establish theoretical and methodological foundations for the development of training programs aimed at professionalizing linguistic and cultural mediators in the healthcare domain. Its overarching objective is to equip health professionals with essential linguistic and cultural skills necessary to overcome socio-communicative barriers hindering the access of Sinophone communities to healthcare services. The presentation will provide an overview of the current status of the research project, with a particular focus on methodological considerations and data collection. Additionally, it will discuss the challenges encountered and delineate future research directions aimed at further bridging socio-communicative gaps and enhancing the accessibility and effectiveness of healthcare services for Sinophone communities.