Table 5 Socially, culturally, linguistically acceptable services

Considerations for socially acceptable and need-based care

Inclusion of family and carers

Q1 “[The previous GP] came to know us as a family and […] He was concerned about my husband’s condition and he was concerned about me. He saw us as a package, as a couple. He saw our conditions as individual, but we were two together and how one impacted on the other.” (Carer 4 SWS)

Gender-based preferences for GPs

Q2 “I really liked [the previous female GP], and I thought wow, I think I’d feel really comfortable having a pap smear or something with her. I don’t know that I’d feel with the other GP, the male one […] I heard a lot of people have said it would be really great if he had a female GP in the practice as well.” (Patient 1 SWS)

Considerations for culturally and linguistically acceptable care

Catering to patient’s linguistic preferences

Q3 “So I speak Samoan. So that’s very helpful. So I tell all our medical students and doctors ‘if you have a second language please use it, because it will only be of benefit to your patients’.” (GP 11 SWS)

Q4 “The receptionist can speak English and Vietnamese, because some of my patients, it’s hard to make a booking in English so they’d prefer to speak in Vietnamese, so they call us to make a booking.” (GP 6 SWS)

Working as a GP team to offer more culturally acceptable care

Q5 “So we talk about cultural competency or being medically competent. So medically competent is what our doctors are. Now they understand signs of an upper respiratory infection, but they need to understand the culture and what’s going on. So we talk about the domains of general practice and that’s something that even our medical students learn about and we learn about the one on one relationship that we deal with the patient’s demographics. Then we deal with the psycho-social environment, then we deal with the medical-legal. Then we put all that together to manage a patient in general practice.” (GP 11 SWS)

Cultural acceptability of specialist services

Q6 “[W] e do have a language barrier with the Vietnamese culture. Sometimes, especially mental health, they do have the issue and they don’t tell because of the social stigma there […] they just want to talk to you because when they talk, they worry about the information leaking, even though you explain that everything’s confidential, but they don’t trust.” (GP 6 SWS)