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Communication is a key concern at any office or service facility. However, when your place of business is a hospital, clinic, or healthcare facility, communication becomes positively critical. It’s not just about hiring gracious, articulate staff you can trust to be accommodating and thorough with your patients, either. It’s also about being able to communicate properly with the people coming in under any set of circumstances.
What happens when you need to convey a diagnosis to someone with little or no ability to speak English? How will you make sure critical information isn’t misunderstood or overlooked altogether? Hiring a professional interpreter can help make language barriers a thing of the past. Let’s take a closer look at how, and discuss why, even small healthcare facilities need interpretation services they can rely on.
What Happens When You Don’t Have an Interpreter?
Despite the fact that there are millions of people in the United States that speak little or no English, the great majority of the nation’s healthcare establishments haven’t secured access to adequate interpretation solutions. Either they don’t have any at all, or they rely on solutions that are simply not up to snuff. When an interpreter is needed, they really do rely on a bilingual receptionist or the patient’s own family members to facilitate communication, wrongly thinking it’s enough.
As a result, patients with a limited ability to speak English aren’t getting the care they need and deserve. Medical conditions are frequently misdiagnosed or miscommunicated to the patient. This makes inappropriate or inadequate treatment much more likely to occur.
What Changes When You Hire a Professional Interpreter?
Being able to communicate with your patients is more than just convenient. It could drastically reduce the costs associated with diagnostic or treatment errors. According to a recent study conducted by the American College of Emergency Physicians, medical establishments that maintained access to professional interpreters enjoyed a far lower error rate than establishments that relied on non-professionals to facilitate communications – 12% as compared to 22%.
Many might wonder why this would be the case. After all, isn’t Spanish or French the same when spoken by a layman as it would be when spoken by a professional? Actually, no. Professional interpreters aren’t just fluent in the languages they specialize in. They’re highly literate when it comes to medical terminology, as well. In fact, professional medical interpreters have just as strong a grasp on medical concepts and healthcare lingo as a doctor would.
Having a professional interpreter around also benefits the patient emotionally. Think about the last time you were facing a scary medical situation yourself. Try to recall how stressed or scared you were. Now imagine you weren’t able to communicate properly with the doctors or the hospital staff. How much might that add to your stress and fear in such a situation?
Just knowing that they’re able to communicate properly significantly reduces stress for non-English speaking patients. They’re able to speak in the language they’re most comfortable with, instead of struggling with English, and to receive answers that are easy to understand. This can drastically improve the quality of interactions between patient and doctor.
The Benefits of Outsourcing Interpretation Services
Of course, knowing that your clinic or healthcare facility could really use an interpreter is one thing. Actually gaining access to the right person is another. Many smaller facilities can’t afford to bring on one or two more full-time employees. Space for in-house employees to work when they’re in between consultations can be scarce, as well. That’s where outsourcing comes in.
Save Money: When you outsource your medical interpretation needs to a third party company, you don’t have to worry about paying for someone’s full-time salary. You pay for exactly the services you need, and no more.
Quality Services: When you outsource to a professional interpretation company with a reputation for excellence, you gain instant access to high-quality resources. Such companies will employ certified interpreters that are collectively fluent in multiple languages. You’re more likely to have access to native speakers.
Convenience: A third party company will also be able to help you with different types of services. Be sure to ask whether or not they offer on-site interpretation services for conferences or lectures, telephone interpretation services, and document translations.
Being able to communicate properly with patients and colleagues, no matter what their English proficiency may be, is vitally important when you work in a medical setting. Make sure you’re prepared!
