Telephone Interpreting for Health Organizations

By Sarah-Claire Jordan

Health organizations have always had a lot on their plates in terms of being able to provide help to everyone who needs it, but with all of the disease outbreaks and the global refugee crisis, providing care and services in the right language is yet another issue to tackle. Many organizations are recognizing this need and taking steps to handle it, but there are still some that aren’t quite sure what to do. This article will be particularly helpful for those organizations trying to figure out the best way to handle language barriers.

Telephone interpreting is the act of interpreting, but over the phone. It may sound simple, but, depending on what needs to be interpreted, it can get rather complicated. That’s why you need to make sure and only work with professional interpreters, even if it is just over the phone. In this case, the interpreter would need to be well-versed in medical terminology and practices in both languages as well as fluent and an experienced interpreter in general. This may sound like a very niche market, and it is, but it is also fast-growing and extremely important.

In a medical setting, be it a hospital or health organization, an interpreter is doing more than just making sure the correct information is conveyed. They are providing a service that means the difference between a misdiagnosis, unneeded treatments, or even death. Many times, family members will need to be informed of a patient’s situation or status in order to make important decisions on their behalf. An interpreter can easily become a comforting link to another world, where the culture is different and people express themselves in a different way than in the English-speaking world. Being in a hospital or dealing with a health issue is stressful enough, so to be able to communicate with someone knowledgeable in medicine in your native tongue is truly a relief.

Using a telephone interpreting instead of an interpreter who comes in and works face-to-face has a lot of advantages. First of all, you don’t have to pay to have an interpreter on staff at all times. Some organizations, including hospitals, go that route, and it can work, but more often than not the interpreters only work with a few languages and work too many hours without a break. When you call up an interpreter, you are more likely to get someone on the line who works with the target language because they could be anywhere in the world. They are also more likely to be on top of things since they aren’t running around all day interpreting for everyone.

If all health organizations would get on board and start working with medical interpreters who can interpret over the phone, a lot of stress would be avoided and a lot of problems would seem to solve themselves. You don’t need in-house interpreters to provide those services, and over the phone interpreting is just as good as face-to-face. On top of that, it saves money, so it is a great option for health organizations that have a tighter budget.

Tags: health, medical translation, staff management

Category: Business Translation