Hello--

I queried our listserv (CLAS-talk) to find out some of their impressions about using telephone interpreting services, and here is a sample of responses we received:

Israel is taking its first steps in professional linguistic access to health

services. The first telephone medical interpreting service operates since

2007 by an NGO - Tene Briut, an association that promotes the health of

Ethiopian-Israeli immigrants. The Ethiopian-Israeli community numbers about

120,000 persons, and there are strong ties between its members. Some clinics

employ health mediators, who also serve as face-to-face interpreters.

>From our experience, patients might prefer telephone interpreting when

speaking about urological/gynaecological problems, sexual functioning

problems, psychological distress, or any problems they don't want the

community to know about (HIV/ unplanned pregnancies etc.)

The service is also useful in cases of emergency (911 call centers), when

there is no time to use face-to-face interpreter. Our challenge in the

latter case is to inform the community of the possibility of getting an

interpreter when calling 911, in addition to general lack of knowledge

about consuming emergency services. .

>From the providers' point of view, we encourage using the telephone for

short, bureaucratic issues (in the clinic's office, for example) - thus

enabling health mediators (where available) to concentrate in health

education. However, 75% of our users are physicians, so we have to put more

efforts in convincing other health care professionals to use the telephone

service.

And last - telephone interpreting is preferable in large medical centers

(secondary and tertiary medicine), where the relatively small number of

Amharic-speaking patients will never justify the employment of face-to-face

interpreters.

Michal Schuster

Tene Briut

www.tene-briut.org.il

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Dear All,

         Australia has a well established telephone interpreting service that is

provided free of charge to health services.

See: Huang, Y.-T. and C. Phillips (2009). "Telephone interpreters in general

practice - Bridging the barriers to their use." Australian Family Physician

38(6): 443-446.

New Zealand piggy backs onto this with Language Line which is a government run

telephone interpreting service.

Both the Australian and New Zealand service find an interpreter on demand. This

has the major advantage of being able to get an interpreter for managing acute

presentations (as opposed to appointments) For New Zealand given that most of

the interpreters are in Australia the anonymity is a clear advantage.

It is also cheaper than on site interpreting and New Zealand does not provide a

sufficient budget to use on site interpreters a lot.

In our practice a Not for profit primary care service with a large proportion of

people from a refugee background we use 4 types of interpreting:

Family members ( a recent audit suggested that we use them for about 50% of our

interpreting and 70% of the time this works fine)

Employed on site interpreter; We employ an interpreter who covers one of our

larger ethnic groups. Thisworked well all the time in the audit and is an

interesting finding as this interpreter does provide some cultural brokerage as

well as interpreting.

Face to Face interpreters for arranged appointments

Telephone interpreters.

In my experience telephone interpreters have to be well quality controlled

because it is much harder managing an interpreter who is not performing ideally

if they are on the phone.

The other factor is the complexity of the consultation. Telephone is ideal for

transmission of simple messages, change of warfarin dose for example. Completely

inappropriate for telling a patient that they have a fatal disease.

Does anyone have any published information in this area?

Regards

Ben Gray

University of Otago

Wellington

New Zealand

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Thanks for adding these UK messages to our distribution Julia.  From my

perspective in Northwest Ohio, the description offered below distinguishing

between use of telephonic interpreting on the coasts versus the rest of the US

is spot on!  Unfortunately, in our region, the alternative to telephonic

interpreting is not face-to-face interpreting.  It's not having any acceptable

form of interpreting.  So yes, in our case, it is preferred!   -shb

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For several years now, I've used telephone as well videoconferencing and

live onsite translation.

I can say that as a clinician, given the preference, I would prefer a live

onsite interpreter. However, when I am tasked to have only a telephone

interpretation, I will tailor the questions differently to minimize the

chance of the patient being unable to answer.  In other words, the clinician

should ask a question that an answer can be given or the answer is probable.

Richard Hom, OD, MPA

Linkedin "Richard Hom"

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I recently attended a seminar on Somalia refugees and sensitive services.

According to the patients,  they would feel more comfortable with a

telephone interpreter than someone in the room during prenatal, post natal

and other sensitive services.  They would always prefer a female

interpreter, but a telephone interpreter was overall preferred over an

additional person in the room.  This was especially true when female

circumcision was part of the considerations.

Diana M. Carr

Health Net of California

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