In the blog Indispensable Medical Interpretation in the Covid Era, we have mentioned in great detail and length the top reasons that make healthcare and medical interpretation vital for delivering quality care to all individuals. We talked about linguistic diversity and patients with limited English proficiency, for example. Similarly, we touched upon immigration and migrants’ right to health. Without a doubt, healthcare professionals see healthcare interpreting and translation services as vital for quality and equitable care that every patient -regardless of what language they speak, what culture they belong to, or what abilities they have – deserves.
Multicultural and Multilingual Population
The United Kingdom has a remarkably diverse community composed of people from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds who call it their home. Just as good as it’s socially, it’s equally challenging for healthcare organisations to provide quality care to such a multicultural and multilingual population. It’s in this context that the role of language support providers like Locate Translate becomes all the more important to help healthcare professionals communicate seamlessly in multiple languages.
We have provided and continue to provide healthcare facilities with reliable language support to help out culturally and linguistically diverse communities. The professional support that we provide includes, but is not limited to, translation, transcription and interpreting in over 30 language pairs.
Language Support for UK Healthcare Organisations
Healthcare organisations may need a combination of written translation, interpreting and transcription depending on the setting and the information being communicated. The appropriate language service should be selected according to the patient, document or appointment, language pair, confidentiality requirements and level of risk.
Projects can be matched with professional linguists according to the language pair, healthcare subject, format and intended use. Services can include medical transcription, medical document translation and professional interpreting.
Improve Doctor-Patient Experience
Not understanding what the doctor says can drive any sane person crazy. That’s why patients sometimes choose to bear the pain instead of going to the doctor due to the communication gap caused by the language divide. But you can improve the patient experience by making interpreting services available to your patients so that they’re clearly able to explain their condition to the doctor and receive back advice from the doctor that they perfectly understand too.
Clearly, language services by bridging the linguistic divide between healthcare professionals and patients impact healthcare delivery in fundamental ways. With seamless communication comes you can save your staff many a headache and let the peace of mind sink in, which is integral to increased patient satisfaction.
Reduce Complications & Improve Healthcare Outcome
Sometimes, misunderstandings pave the way for serious medical complications. And misunderstandings can occur both on the doctors’ side and on the patients’ where the doctor misunderstands what the patient had to say hence misdiagnoses and the patient misunderstands the doctor’s treatment plans. Either way, it can lead to serious medical complications that are unnecessary and completely unavoidable if professional language services are used.
As is clear from the above scenario, language services have a direct role in increasing the quality of healthcare outcomes and in reducing aftercare complications like readmission rates, extracting informed consent, and ensuring compliance with treatment plans, while significantly reducing repeat visits.
Increase Patient Care Efficiency and Staff Productivity
Language barriers create friction and friction leads to inefficiency. Only language services can reduce this friction and streamline the entire process. Say, for example, our translators can explain things in patients’ preferred language, thereby reducing the consultation time and bringing efficiency to patient care.
Based on the same logic, your staff too can see an increase in productivity through our language services as there will no longer be any language barriers to overcome and fear of misunderstandings and misdiagnosis that further slow down the process.
Our Language Services for UK Healthcare Organisations
Translation and Localisation Services
With language specialists in over 30 languages, we translate written from the source language into the target language quickly and accurately, including medical documentation like discharge instructions, website and app content, enrollment and consent forms along with other educational materials.
On-Demand Interpretation Services
Professional interpreters can be arranged for healthcare appointments in person or remotely by telephone or video, subject to the language, setting, location, mode, deadline and interpreter availability.
Face-to-Face Interpretation Services
You can also schedule a face-to-face interpretation session with our professional interpreters who will be there along with you in your meetings and consultations that you’re conducting live in real-time, right at your desired location.
Medical Transcription Services
Professional transcriptionists are assigned to deliver secure and quality medical transcription services in multiple languages to provide you with neat-and-clean transcripts of interviews with doctors, clinical trials, and medical market research.
What Makes Interpreting and Translation Services So Important to the NHS?
- Helps patients who do not speak English get quality health care at predominantly English-speaking hospitals.
- Important to encourage limited English-speaking people to seek health care, who otherwise stay away because they cannot clearly communicate fluently in English.
- Through access to interpreting services hospitals can and do reduce the cost of patient care by reducing the number of patients who return to emergency care.
- “Did Not Attend” or DNA annually costs NHS £400 Million. This unnecessary expenditure can be saved by using language services.
- Data shows that without interpretation services Limited English Patients tend to stay longer than other patients in the hospital, hence incurring more costs.
- NHS may face litigation if language services aren’t provided to limited English patients, which goes against equitable healthcare frameworks.
Why Choose Locate Translate?
Quality – Healthcare language projects should be scoped according to the subject, audience and risk. Written medical content may require specialist terminology and bilingual review, while interpreting assignments should be matched to the setting and communication needs.
Reliability – Availability, mode, turnaround and project requirements should be confirmed before the assignment so the appropriate linguist and workflow can be arranged.
Cost Effective – Our services are competitively priced and easily accessible to all medical professionals and organisations in the UK.
Security – Healthcare projects can contain sensitive information. NDA, access, transfer, retention and deletion requirements should be agreed before files are shared or an assignment begins.
Contact Us
Locate Translate has language specialists available in 30+ languages to support all your language projects.
Get in touch with us experts at hello@locatetranslate.co.uk or call directly at 0208 609 4852.
Need healthcare language services for a current project?
For written patient records, reports, clinical research, pharmaceutical or medical-device content, see our medical translation services. For broader clinical, pharma, biotech, CRO or MedTech programmes, see our life sciences language services. Live interpreting can be arranged separately according to language, mode, location and availability.