I recently came across a post discussing some of the issues that hospitals and healthcare organizations in the US face related to non-English speakers.
The article made some good points. I found the statistics staggering. According to the article, as many as 23 million Americans speak English at a level lower than “very well” and another 12 million speak little to no English.
The article then goes on to layout out three questions that healthcare organizations should ask themselves about how they communicate with their multilingual patients.
1. Has your team done an effective job of communicating key patient information?
This is a great question, we have a few hospital system clients that translate intake forms, patient education brochures (e.g. “What to do when you are diagnosed with high cholesterol“), and even videos related to the patient experience. Chicago also has a very heavy population of Polish immigrants so one of our clients even translated a Yellow Pages Ad.
2. Is your medical practice or hospital marketing communication program using culturally appropriate communications?
This is very important. The first step is to understand what languages are spoken by your patients. You also want to understand how much American culture they have absorbed. Are these patients recent immigrants to this country or have they been here a long time? These issues may come up when trying to translate something as simple as a menu. In a recent menu project we had to translate “Bagel” in Hmong. There really is no such word in Hmong so we had to describe what a bagel is in our translation.
It is really important to understand your demographics, especially since the language requirements could vary from city to city.
3. What about signage?
This is also key. Most hospitals and healthcare institutions are more like the size of college campuses these days. It is easy enough to get lost even if you speak English! A simple translated version of your map and directory will meet this need.
The article goes on to cite a statistic showing that more than 25% of patients who needed an interpreter but did not get one, misunderstood instructions related to their care.
A simple solution would be to hire a telephonic interpretation service or firm. That way you would have 24/7/365 access to whatever languages are required at the moment of need without employing full time interpreters that might only be needed occasionally. I have heard stories of hospitals using a “language Rolodex” where they stored names of anyone in the organization that could speak additional languages. That seems like a good idea, but using people that are not properly trained to be interpreters in a medical setting is dangerous and could potentially violate HIPAA requirements.
Overall the article was really good but I do take issue with this statement in the article, “The good news is that with today’s smartphones, language translators don’t have to be human because there’s an iPhone translation app for that.”.
I would never recommend any type of machine translation in a health care setting. The risks are far too high.
