Issues in Quality Use of Medicines in two Non-English Speaking Background Communities

Abstract

Compliance is a policy issue in the quality use of medicine that has attracted much interest; however, there is little research about medication compliance issues in people of non-English speaking backgrounds. This paper describes a qualitative data collection that was used to identify compliance issues, and possible approaches to these issues, in an area of South-Eastern Sydney with a high non-English speaking population. Two parallel, iterative, series of GP and consumer focus groups were held in Arabic and Chinese communities. Later focus groups built on the findings of earlier groups and sought to engage GPs and consumers in identifying issues in compliance, and possible approaches to these issues. The paper compares and contrasts the results from these two communities and suggests that the approach might be used to identify compliance issues in other communities. Communication around appropriate medication use was the key issue common to both communities. The Chinese community was otherwise much more critical of Western medicine than the Arahic community, perhaps because of the strength of traditional medicine in that culture.