Medical Language Interpretation and the Best Practice

Medical Language Interpretation
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Medical Language Interpretation
This report evaluates the range of medical language interpretation to deduce best practice, including scenarios lacking qualified language, ethical principles considered, and implications to patient care and the public health code of ethics. The essay also evaluates U.S. and Taiwan medical practice models to establish the best model.
Medical Language Interpretation and Best Practice
Many medical language interpretation strategies, including simultaneous or consecutive interpreting, prove effective in bridging language gaps. While consecutive interpretation is provided after a speaker has finished speaking, the simultaneous interpretation occurs when the interpreter hears the original speech and interprets it at the same time. In addition, interpretation could be offered in a wide range of approaches, including video conferencing, telephone, in-person, and technological tools (Samsudin et al., 2021). Accordingly, each mode of medical language interpretation poses unique challenges in sharing information with patients effectively. The best practice is for hospitals to use language access services (LAS) by hiring competent medical interpreters in their patient populations’ major languages and contracting videoconferencing and telephonic services to ensure access to extra languages when necessary (Basu et al., 2017). According to Woosley (2018), the role of interpretation is to communicate between the patient and the physician to avoid undesirable health outcomes due to the language barrier.
Two Scenarios
In the first case, a 55-year-old Spanish-speaking lady visited the hospital for a preoperative clinical examination to schedule an abdominal hysterectomy. On interacting with the patient, the physician realized that the hospital had not booked an in-person interpreter for the particular case in advance. The physician’s efforts to reach the hospital’s medical interpreter proved futile as the professional was unavailable via phone call. Ultimately, the physician managed to get help from a Spanish-speaking medical trainee who facilitated the communication. The lack of the facility’s interpreter led to time wastage and poor patient experiences with the healthcare organization, as indicated by unfavorable client reviews on the website (Karliner, 2018). The central ethical principle, in this case, is beneficence – the physician’s obligation to act in ways that promote the patient’s wellbeing and health outcomes. It upholds various moral canons to defend and safeguard others’ rights, eliminate conditions that would lead to harm, and prevent harm. By including the medical trainee in care delivery, the physician failed to act in ways that promote the patient’s wellbeing (Varkey, 2021). The implications for the patient included poor health outcomes and more time spent trying to receive healthcare services, which contributed to a negative experience with the healthcare facility (Woosley, 2018). This scenario undermines America’s public health code of ethics by failing to respect the rights of all individu...