Role of Healthcare Interpreters

Medical healthcare interpreter and translation service in hospital and clinics
Physicians and other medical staff at healthcare centers are facing difficulty in communicating with non-English speaking patients. Proper communication with the patients is necessary for the healthcare providers in order to deal with the medical problems. Hence a translation and interpretation of the patient’s problem is necessary to understand the problems and to provide proper treatment. This is where medical healthcare interpreters step in.

Most of the patients think that they will receive an appropriate treatment once they reach a hospital and describe the ailment and its symptoms. Things are not as simple as it looks and communication is an important factor. If the patient or his family cannot explain the exact condition and symptoms, then unexpected complications may arise. It will become even worse when there is an emergency.

There are trained medical interpreters in some hospitals and clinics in order to translate the conversation of the patient but most of the hospitals do not have such services. Serious consequences may happen on the outcome of the treatment due to miscommunication.

Mistakes in interpretation can cause medical mistakes
According to a recent study based on the 13 encounters between patients who were non-English speaking, physicians and the interpreters were recorded in a video shows that there were as many as 396 interpreter errors. This study was done by the department of Boston Medical Center. Based on this study, untrained interpreters are more likely to make errors which had serious consequences than trained personnel.

Availability of medical interpreters or translation services
At present in five U.S states such as Maine, Minnesota, Hawaii, Washington and Vermont, these services are covered by insurance. Interpreters are available on the payroll of many large hospitals in Milwaukee and full-time and part-time Spanish speaking interpreters are employed by the State owned Children’s Hospital. The medical interpreters or translation services are being outsourced by many hospitals based on their need. Adequate resources to take up the expenses of hiring medical interpreters or translators are not available in most of the healthcare establishments.
Business and pleasure trips to far-off countries are becoming popular now-a-days as the global economy is improving. Foreign students are migrating for the purpose of studying in the universities of US and Britain and software and other professionals are entering in to the European and American businesses have been increasing for the past two decades. Based on the recent studies, about 45 million people who speak a language other than English in their homes are staying in US. And about 19 million among them cannot communicate in English properly.

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