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Introduction
Medical practitioners should work effectively with interpreters to ensure that all patients have an equal opportunity for healthcare delivery. Therefore, by effectively working together with interpreters, physicians will ensure that certain groups are not denied access to quality healthcare. Studies have placed an emphasis on the importance of interpreters in the medical field. For instance, Elderkin-Thompson, Silver & Waitzkin (2001) concluded that untrained interpreters make the most translation errors in the medical field. The results obtained from this study seem to indicate that providing care to non-English patients may be challenging at times. This paper will discuss the greatest challenge experienced by physicians when providing care to non-English clients, the current interpreter policies, and approaches that can be used to improve the process of providing care to non-English speaking clients.
Challenge for Providing Care to Non-English Speaking Clients
Language barriers present a serious challenge to building relationships between medical practitioners and their patients. Studies have established that non-English speaking patients fare the worst in the contemporary healthcare systems (Baraldi & Gavioli, 2012). To begin with, when there is a language barrier, there are high chances that the patient will be diagnosed with more or less advanced disease. Errors in diagnosing patients with the correct disease come because of the misinterpretation of the symptoms. Another challenge that may arise as a result of the language barrier is that the patient may have trouble when taking the prescribed medication (Brisset, Leanza & Laforest, 2013). Lastly, a non-English speaking patient may spend more time in the hospital due to poor communication with the doctor. Medical interpreters play a significant role in filling the gap between medical practitioners and non-English speaking patients and improving communication with non-English speaking patients. Incorporating professional interpreters will help in minimizing challenges faced by healthcare providers when dealing with non-English speaking patients.
Interpreter Policies
Complexities that surround healthcare delivery to non-English patients have forced medical practitioners to adopt policies that will help in addressing communication barriers (Brisset, Leanza & Laforest, 2013). Interpreter policies in healthcare act as guidelines that are used by interpreters to provide their services to non-English speaking populations. Our institution provides both Cyracom interpretation systems and on-site medical interpreters. Translation approaches ensure that physicians and patients can communicate in a safe and effective manner. The institution’s medical interpreter policy requires that patients only use either a remote video translator, medical translator, or telephonic translator services. By using the institution’s interpreter service, the hospital has access to reliable information.
Improving Care
While healthcare professionals come up with approaches to addressing the needs of the varied society, it is important that they gain an understanding of the gap that exists between physicians and non-English speaking clients. In most cases, these obstacles leave both the patient and healthcare providers feeling that there is something lost in the translation (Baraldi & Gavioli, 2012). Professionalizing interpretation in healthcare may involve introducing training programs to interpreters (Brisset, Leanza & Laforest, 2013). However, this should adopt a holistic approach in treating non-English clients. When families and friends of non-English speaking patients are engaged in treatment, they help in bridging communication gaps. Since interpreters play a significant role in the delivery of quality healthcare, it is necessary to adopt the most practical approaches that will ensure medical practitioners meet the needs of non-English speaking patients.
References
Baraldi, C., & Gavioli, L. (2012). Coordinating participation in dialogue interpreting (Vol. 102). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
Brisset, C., Leanza, Y., & Laforest, K. (2013). Working with interpreters in health care: a systematic review and meta-ethnography of qualitative studies. Patient education and counseling, 91(2), 131-140.
Elderkin-Thompson, V., Silver, R. C., & Waitzkin, H. (2001). When nurses double as interpreters: a study of Spanish-speaking patients in a US primary care setting. Social science & medicine, 52(9), 1343-1358.
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