All right, we hired a professional medical interpreter, NOW what do we do?
Useful Tips for Working with a Medical Interpreter

Congratulations to your organization for making the wise decision to employ the services of a qualified interpreter. The use of a professional will ultimately reduce errors and unnecessary costs, improve the safety of your patient, and allow you to provide quality health care services. Bromberg & Associates would like to provide you with some helpful tips and information for working with an interpreter to ensure a successful session.

Prior to the assignment, provide the interpreter with as much information as possible regarding the particular case. Allow a few minutes for health care provider to meet with the interpreter before the start of the assignment and introduce interpreter and patient to one another. It is a frequent misconception that the interpreter and patient know each other; when in reality, the assignment is presumably the first time they meet.  In this pre-session, the interpreter should be able to explain his/her role including the goal of facilitating communication, confidentiality, accuracy, completeness, and use of the first person form; find out the goal of the encounter for both the provider and the client, and include any necessary cultural information. The purpose of such a brief pre-session is to   promote effective patient-provider communication, thus increasing overall patient satisfaction and quality of care.

After the pre-session is conducted and the session commences, there are a few guidelines to follow:

1. Do not speak directly to the interpreter. In many cases, doctors and nurses speak directly to the interpreter and ask the linguist to relay the message to the patient.  This method is not recommended because it obstructs proper communication.  Instead, the interpreter should perform behind the scenes, so to speak.  Doctor and patient should interact in respective languages as if each understood the other, while the interpreter speaks solely in the first person and engages in consecutive interpreting.  First, the interpreter listens to the entire original phrase or passage, and then interprets it into the target language.

2. Speak naturally. It is not necessary for either hospital personnel or patient to speak slower than normal, break in mid-sentence, or articulate more.  An interpreter is a professional who studied years to reach his level of expertise. As an authority in all languages that the assignment requires, he/she can understand and interpret each language at all normal speeds.  Nevertheless, if the interpreter requires clarification about a word, expression, or sentence, he/she may interrupt conversation to inquire.

3. Avoid private conversations – everything will be interpreted. Professional interpreters have been hired to interpret every word during a session.  If a private conversation is necessary, the speakers must leave the room to discuss the matter at hand.

4. One person should speak at a time. To ensure clarity and precision during the interpretation, it is required that only one person speak at a time.

5. Avoid asking the interpreter for opinions or comments regarding the content of the meeting. The interpreter is an unbiased professional acting as a medium to link two people of different language backgrounds.  It is unethical as well as unfair to both parties for the interpreter to give advice or opinions during an interpreting session.  Therefore, it is important that hospital personnel or family members do not put the interpreter in an uncomfortable position in which he/she must decline responding to a question.

6. Length of interpretation. The actual act of interpreting is very draining because the interpreter continually uses mental language skills to relay all information properly.  It is important to be sensitive to the needs of the interpreter by providing substantial breaks in the session, especially if the interpreting assignment lasts for several hours.

The need for qualified, competent interpreters is rapidly increasing all over the country as immigrants who do not speak English are dispersing to both urban and rural areas. With almost one in five people in America speaking a language other than English at home, hospitals and health care providers must be prepared to communicate with this linguistically diverse clientele. Geographic disbursement will only continue, and so the demand for efficient and accurate communication will have to morph into a mainstream service and not merely a “luxury perk” heavily affected institutions offer. With the implementation of qualified interpreters into the healthcare industries, communication barriers will be broken down unifying our country not just in cultural richness but also in cultural professionalism.