TY - JOUR T1 - Safety and achieving equality amid diversity in health care JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 774 LP - 776 VL - 57 IS - 543 AU - Joe Kai Y1 - 2007/10/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/57/543/774.abstract N2 - ‘I am becoming rather tired of endless advice as to how and why GPs should make adjustments for patients from ethnic minorities’.So writes a GP in response to a recent special series on ethnic diversity in a well respected educational publication for family physicians. Her view typifies how equality and diversity continue to create polarised perspectives. For example, witness the rather shrill debate about interpreting services in the UK at present. Alarm at their cost to public sector has provoked a review of language services at the request of the Secretary of State for Communities no less. Our corresponding GP expresses a popular concern that ‘assimilation is the most important aspect of integrating immigrants, but many patients never seem to learn English’.Promoting safe health care requires that everyone should be able to access the care they need. Achieving equality of care amid diversity is one part of this. Many with limited English in the UK and US are among the most disempowered and disadvantaged of our patients and experience inequalities in care, mortality, and morbidity.1,2 The case that any safe health system will always need some form of appropriate interpreting services is surely irresistible given the reality of global migration. On the other hand, there is a perfectly cogent argument for people to learn — and be supported to learn — the major language of the country in which they choose to settle and live if they are to benefit most from the systems and opportunities they encounter as citizens.Such divergence stimulates thought and debate. It certainly makes good copy for the tabloid and general medical press.3 However, and with the danger of … ER -