Linguistic and Cultural Barriers Affecting Clinician-Patient Communication in Hospitals in the South West Region of Cameroon

This study investigated the linguistic and cultural differences that affect clinician-patient communication in the Fako Division of Cameroon. An exploratory research design was employed where simple random and purposive sampling technique to elicit data. The patients that constituted the sample were randomly selected in the hospital and administered questionnaire and interviews. Upon collection of data, Shannon-Weaver (1948) Communication Model, Ajzen (1980) Theory of Planned Behaviour and Giles’s (2016) Communication Accommodation Theory guided the analysis. The results for this study evinced that the language used by clinicians and patients in the health area of Fako varies as it involves different languages. That is, clinicians used whatever coping techniques to get their message across to the patients during clinical communication and patients are sometimes dissatisfied with the level of information they get concerning their health situations. The results also indicated that patients use different techniques to get their message across to the clinicians who sometimes find it difficult to get the intended message leaving them frustrated. Based on these results, this study recommends that: (a) the Cameroon government through the local hospital administration should train their staff in the common language mostly used by the patients in that area to foster communication between them to avoid having patients and clinician devise coping techniques to communicate with each other; and (b) the hospital should also put in place expert translators to reduce the information disparity in situations where family, friends or colleagues are used to play the role of translators.