Why should I use a trained health care interpreter? Isn’t a bilingual staff adequate?
A trained health care interpreter’s bilingual proficiency has been properly assessed and deemed superior. The interpreter is trained in medical terminology, interpretation skills and bound by the ethical standards guiding the practice of health care interpretation. Bilingual staff members often do not have adequate proficiency in medical terminology nor are they skilled in interpretation techniques. Furthermore, the heavy workload of bilingual staff does not permit them to easily step away from primary duties to interpret for patients. Providing trained health care interpretation services will also help you to ensure that the quality of your services is not lost in translation. It will promote trust with the patient and will prevent potential medical malpractice from inadequate interpretation by untrained interpreters. Finally, there is a large body of federal and state laws mandating the provision of competent language assistance to limited English proficient health consumers. A parti
Related Questions
- Do you claim that Converser™ is better than human translators? Wouldn an interpreter or a bilingual staff member translate better than Converser?
- What is the difference between a bilingual staff person and an interpreter or translator?
- I’m bilingual. Is that sufficient to be a health care interpreter?
