Themes and Findings
In their discussion section, Ahmed and colleagues focused on the themes and main discoveries. Researchers have summarized the literature on the obstacles immigrants face when accessing medical services and identified several promising research gaps.
First, Ahmed and colleagues (2016) found that cultural and communication obstacles were highly significant among the five main categories of barriers identified in this study. Canada is a culturally diverse country, and to treat patients with cultural competence, doctors and other healthcare professionals must have a clear understanding of the subtle differences between the cultures from which their patients originate (Ahmed et al., 2016).
Second, researchers found that studies on healthcare barriers faced by immigrants do not accurately reflect the diversity of individuals entering Canada or the volume of migration from specific nations (Ahmed et al., 2016). The review demonstrates that people’s perceptions of barriers differ depending on their ethnic and cultural backgrounds (Ahmed et al., 2016). Therefore, more investigation is required to pinpoint problems unique to the various cultures.
The authors identified two additional themes related to healthcare accessibility. Third, researchers identified only one article on elderly immigrants in Canada (Ahmed et al., 2016). Fourth, there are few studies that examine obstacles to immigrant healthcare from the perspective of doctors and other healthcare professionals (Ahmed et al., 2016).
Limitations
Finally, in the conclusion section, the researchers determined that there are certain limitations to this combined knowledge. For instance, the first limitation is that the study focused exclusively on immigrants from Canada (Ahmed et al., 2016). Second, to minimize translation hassle, researchers limited the selection to articles published in English (Ahmed et al., 2016). As a result, some pertinent articles may have been overlooked.
Third, the review’s purview does not extend to barrier mitigation (Ahmed et al., 2016). Fourth, researchers did not account for obstacles to health care that temporary residents and other non-immigrant Canadians face (Ahmed et al., 2016). Therefore, while identifying the themes connected to healthcare accessibility, the authors also discussed limitations.
Reference
Ahmed, S., Shommu, N. S., Rumana, N., Barron, G. R., Wicklum, S., & Turin, T. C. (2016). Barriers to access of primary healthcare by immigrant populations in Canada: A literature review. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, 18, 1522-1540.