Stream: implementers
Topic: Communication
Pravina Munghate (Mar 14 2016 at 19:22):
Hi , It looks like communication http://www.hl7.org/implement/standards/fhir/patient-definitions.html#Patient.communication can be used to capture a patient's language preferences. The question however is how do we indicate the first language or proficiency or ability in a language ? For example - if we have to represent that a patient has difficulty reading or writing English .
Ewout Kramer (Mar 14 2016 at 19:33):
I remember when we designed this part of Patient - we agreed that language proficiency was outside "the 80%", i.e. only interesting to a small part of the implementer community. So, you need extensions to convey proficiency for now.
Lloyd McKenzie (Mar 14 2016 at 22:54):
You could submit a change request for the WG to define a standard extension.
Brian Postlethwaite (Mar 15 2016 at 01:06):
There is a preferred flag on the patient's communication to indicate which language should be used for communicating health information with (even if there are others present)
Brian Postlethwaite (Mar 15 2016 at 01:07):
(This is not an extension)
Pravina Munghate (Mar 17 2016 at 12:14):
Thanks for the prompt reply all ! I still think that for a person , first language and preferred language might be different , especially in a multilingual family . But I can understand that it again falls into 20% cases. So what is the best way to represent questions like - Do you have difficulty understanding English? or Do you have any difficulties reading / writing English? I am asking because from the answers above it is not clear if this warrants an extension .
Brian Postlethwaite (Mar 18 2016 at 00:32):
There is a standard extension for using in this use case where the patient is identified as not being able to speak the native language assumed by the system.
http://hl7.org/fhir/extension-patient-interpreterrequired.html
And then the languages lists in the communication provide the detail of which languages are available, and hence which interpreter to get.
Grahame Grieve (Jul 07 2017 at 06:00):
we need to add to create a communication resource as an channel for the subscription resource
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
