Question

In the examination room waiting for you and your medical interpreter is a 63-year-old female patient from Japan. She has come into the medical practice because of a bad case of psoriasis that has developed recently. In order to treat her, you will need to examine her scalp. What should you tell the interpreter before you enter the room? What are some of the possible sources of misunderstanding that you anticipate before entering?

Answer 1

Medical interpreter is a person who provide language services for the non - english speaking patients to help them to communicate with the doctors ,nurses etc.

Before entering the room the nurse should tell the interpreter the following points :-

- Be aware that some words are not translatable and have different meanings

- Interpreter should alert you to potential cultural misunderstanding.

- Maintaining privacy and confidentiality

- Realize that most patients understand some English words so, do not make any comments .

- speak in short sentences

- ask only one question at a time

- allow appropriate time for the patient and the interpreter to finish the statement

- do not use idioms, jargons or humor

- speak directly to the patient , not to the interpreter

- insist on sentence by sentence interpretation to avoid tangential conversation

- allow 10 mins break after every hour of conversation

- seat the interpreter next to patient

Some of the possibility let sources of misunderstanding are :-

- words with different meaning

- different pronunciation

- different way of expressing the feeling

- too many questions at once

- not allowing to complete the sentence