Communicating With Migrant and Refugee-background Patients: Professional Interpreters or AI?

Abstract

Over the past decades, the Netherlands have received significant numbers of migrants and asylum seekers (CBS 2022a; CBS 2023). As a result, GPs in the Netherlands care for a very culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) (Sawrikar and Katz 2009) patient population. general General Practice Support Professionals (GPSPs) (in Dutch: praktijkondersteuners huisartsenzorg abbreviated as POHs)), hereafter General Practice Support Professionals (GPSPs), play an essential role in offering care to patients. General Practice Support Professionals (GPSPs) can specialise in providing support for patients with somatic illnesses (POH-S), mental health issues (POH-GGZ), or offer tailored services to other groups of patients. The first group of GPSPs (POH-S) support patients with a range of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and COPD, focusing on lifestyle changes and prevention. The second group of GPSPs support patients with mental health issues, through brief interventions, in collaboration with the General Practitioners (GPs) and mental health organisations. GPSPs who support patients with somatic conditions have usually completed a 3-year tertiary education qualification as a nurse or physician assistant followed by a 1-year postgraduate training course (InHolland Hogeschool n.d.), while those working with patients with mental health issues have usually completed a bachelor’s degree in nursing, psychosocial nursing, social work or applied psychology, followed by 2 years work experience in the mental health setting (Forta Opleidingen. n.d.; RINO groep n.d.).

This article presents the findings of a 2024 survey conducted among 418 General Practice Support Professionals (GPSPs), which asked them about their communication with patients from migrant and refugee/asylum seeker backgrounds. Most respondents supported patients with somatic illnesses. The authors will present some demographic information on the Netherlands in general, the background of the largest migrant and refugee groups as well as statistical information on the number of asylum requests in the Netherlands. The literature review section will focus on communication between health providers in the primary care settings, focusing particularly on the increasing use of AI, as well as the Generic Guidelines: Addressing language barriers in the health and social setting (translation ours) released by the Patient Federation in the Netherlands (Patiëntenfederatie, October 2025).