Southlake increases capacity for interpreter service
Friday December 21, 2007 -- Deron Hamel
As the cultural diversity of its patient base expands, Southlake Regional Health Centre is focusing more on the interpretation services it provides to people who come into the hospital, says Barb Kendrick, director of quality and planning at Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket.

Interpreters provide patients unable to communicate in English with an exact translation of information pertaining to their hospital visit, which is a vital ingredient in creating a safe hospital environment, she adds.

“An informed patient is better able to participate actively in their care and less likely to put themselves at risk unknowingly,” says Kendrick. “Informed care providers are less likely to make unintentional errors in prescribing and can create more comprehensive and appropriate care plans and discharge plans.”

Staff members, fluent in languages other than English, act as interpreters at the hospital. Additionally, Southlake has recently signed with an external telephone translation service, a result of growing demand for the service.

The languages most commonly requested by patients at Southlake are Cantonese, Mandarin, Italian and Portuguese, notes Kendrick.

Having high standards when it comes to providing interpretation for patients who cannot speak English is tantamount to patient safety, she adds.

Some of the areas where quality interpretation improves patient safety include pre-discharge information, pain control education, chronic disease education and especially medication safety.

“Medication reconciliation is even more of a challenge with language barriers and care providers may not be able to determine how the medication is actually taken and need to rely on the prescription label if available,” says Kendrick.

Often, patients who cannot speak English will bring a family member or friend to help with interpretation. This, however, is no substitute for a trained medical interpreter.

For one thing, an untrained interpreter may not understand medical terminology and common words can be mistaken for words which have a meaning in a medical context.

Doctor-patient confidentiality can also compromised when a patient uses a family member or friend as an interpreter, and personal conflicts of interest — especially those related to sensitive cultural issues — may arise, Kendrick adds.