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In the urgent working environment of a hospital, there is no time for misdiagnoses. However, these things happen, especially when there is a language barrier between the doctors and nurses, and the patients and his or her family. Medical translation is quite simply a life and death matter. And sadly, medical mistranslations are all too common. Also, in many cases, critical medical information remains untranslated for those who have a pressing need to understand it.
In fact, according to a BMJ study, in 2014, 12 million adults who seek outpatient care are misdiagnosed. That is a whopping 1 out of every 20 adults. The study also claimed that over half of those misdiagnoses result in severe harm.
What’s even more interesting are the reasons why this seems to happen so much. While there certainly are other factors, misinterpretations of translations do cause misdiagnoses to happen.
In a hospital or clinical field, it is vitally important to have enough understanding of the patient’s symptoms and medical background. Any misunderstanding in any of these can cause serious problems for the patient.
Ways in which miscommunication can cause harm to the patient:
- The doctor/nurse does not fully know the patient’s background.
- The patient does not know how to correctly treat the symptoms or administer medication.
- The doctor/nurse fails to realize allergies.
- The patient gets incorrect treatment for an illness they do not have.
- Children are interpreting for parents.
All these can result in bad outcomes, in minimal ways, such as a cold gets worse, to life-changing scenarios. Say, due to a miscommunication, a doctor is not aware of the severe allergy that a patient has to a medicine.
If the doctor does administer the medication, and the patient does not understand what he/she is taking, the results could destroy his/her life.
Guidance for providing qualified medical translation services
To make sure there are proper means of communication between hospital staff and patients who speak a foreign language, the clinic should invest in the following:
1. Translation of all medical and legal documents
This should be done by a professional agency. The translator is knowledgeable of the medical and legal fields, along with the other cultures and languages.
Having proper documentation that a patient can read is necessary for aftercare from a surgery, medication instructions and side effects, and any legalities they may have to sign.
2. On-duty interpreters of various languages
Having children, even if they are adult children, interpret can be problematic. Imagine a child translating a doctor’s diagnosis of cancer to his/her parent.
This is why hospitals need to have professional interpreters who know the correct medical terms and jargon to assist the patients and doctors.
3. Education of the staff
Have doctors and nurses aware about how to properly communicate with patients of different background and cultures. For example, in some cultures, for a doctor to look a patient in the eye is intimidating or rude.
Even if a patient knows some English or uses a translator, if certain social cues are offensive to the patient, this might cause a disconnect between him/her and the medical treatment he/she might need.
Doctors or nurses who communicate with culturally diverse patients need to be aware of these things and approach each situation accordingly.
Consider a partnership with TrueLanguage
Are you looking for a partnership with a language service provider? If so, you may wish to consider TrueLanguage. We offer ISO-certified state-of-the-art business translation services that are on budget, on time, and to the exact specification. Every time. Or perhaps you’re just looking for a cost-free, no-obligation estimate for your next translation project. Either way, we’d love to hear from you!
