Bilingualism in the health system: The Catalan case

Catalan-speaking citizens living in Catalonia have full, formal rights to use their language with all of their region’s administrations. Nevertheless, the available information on the knowledge and use of Catalan by civil servants shows that health care is a weak spot for regional administrations, due to the difficulty in covering all medical specialties. Plataforma per la Llengua has undertaken research in the form of a survey with a sample of 1,600 Catalan inhabitants, to ascertain the level of satisfaction with the enforcement of linguistic rights in public health and determine the scope of a potential language promotion policy that would have health care staff initiate conversations in Catalan. Results of government surveys suggest that language use (by both patients and providers) in the health care system, compared with language use in other areas of public administration, demonstrates the limits of the current regional language promotion policies in Catalonia. Keywords: catalan, linguistic minorities, linguistic rights, health and social services, language competencies