For many primary care providers, days are hectic enough when dealing with just English-speaking patients. I can attest to that. But something I can also confirm is the maturation over the past 15 years since graduating medical school of the technological advances made in streamlining the process of medical translation to make the physician-patient encounter extremely more efficient. I can remember when family practice residency programs built in certain “medical fluency” protocols for residents-in-training to meet the needs of an underserved non-English speaking population in many affected areas nationwide.

These protocols, which involved a level of instruction and patient simulation, were quite time consuming from the aspect of the already-stressed intern who had more than just a modicum of responsibilities outside of his/her FP clinic duties. Today, more than 15 years since receiving that training, I’m really not better off for it (and that’s coming from someone who took four years of Spanish in high school and received complete advanced placement credit — forgoing any foreign language requirement for college graduation).

Throughout my residency training, advances in telephony allowed many practices to integrate remotely stationed interpreters to provide services. Now, with the use of video conferencing technology, some university training programs are combining the on-site presence of interpreters with these methods to create a “cultural immersion” of sorts. The harried family physician will have more time to provide care to the patient, and less time to deal with the issues fraught by the misdiagnoses, cultural misunderstandings, and administrative (insurance) nightmares inherent in practices without such integrated medical interpreter services. | LINK

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