Now it is easier to record the cultural background of your patients
Does your practice use Best Practice? Then the recent upgrade includes significant changes for recording the cultural demographics of your patients. You can now more accurately record your patient’s country of birth, language spoken, their need for an interpreter and cultural background.
With these updated fields now available, we recommend that you update your patient registration forms and gather patients’ cultural demographics. This enables members of your general practice team to provide culturally responsive care.
While some patients may not wish to discuss cultural information initially, many will be happy to once their relationship with your practice is established. Having these fields filled makes it easier to complete an audit that focuses on cultural demographics which will ensure your practice complies with the accreditation requirements.
If you are using Best Practice, we recommend that you:
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Share the Culture Counts resources (the poster and the factsheet) with your staff and discuss why cultural background is an important demographic that can impact patient care.
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Discuss as a practice how you will ask your patients about their cultural background in a sensitive manner. This may be best done with a trusted provider in a private room rather than at the public reception. It may be collected through an updated patient registration form while waiting for the doctor.
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Update your patient registration forms to include the demographic questions about preferred language, the need for an interpreter, country of birth and cultural background/ethnicity. It is still necessary to collect the information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background but when a person is neither, then including a question such as: "What is your cultural background?" can help improve the understanding of our patients' needs
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Ensure your staff know how to use Best Practice for record the new, and existing cultural data fields. For guidance on where to locate these field in Best Practice, please refer to the images below:
More support for your practice
Brisbane South PHN Quality Improvement and Multicultural Health teams can support you with your audit and help you improve your practice's collection of cultural demographic information.
Contact the Quality Improvement team via support@bsphn.org.au.
Contact the Multicultural Health team via multicultural@bsphn.org.au.
Resources to assist with multicultural health
Resources that explain why cultural demographics are so important are available on our website including a poster designed for your practice waiting room, as well as a factsheet for staff and a QI toolkit.