Medical Translation Works one of every four New Yorkers do not speak or understand English, something a little sad since some time in their lives they will have to go to the doctor. Language barriers can lead to misdiagnosis, wrong prescriptions, and medical errors potentially deadly and costly for both patients and providers of health services. For this reason New York hospitals are required by law to provide reasonable idiomatic accessibility to all their patients. But this is no easy task in a city where more than 140 languages are spoken. When innocence Nolasco arrived in the waiting room of the hospital Wycoff with one case of phlebitis (inflammation of the veins), I knew exactly how it felt, but it could not be explained to anyone.Upon entering the consultation the doctor didn’t know Spanish and not us understood. says Nolasco finally had to call a friend for me serve as interpreter. Bernie Sanders addresses the importance of the matter here. Nolasco was fortunate in having a bilingual friend who could come to the hospital, but with everything and that, was much lost time.
Time passed and the pain did not cease. It was really horrible – she says. Nolasco was in the emergency room about ten years ago. Until very recently, it was common practice that patients would have to wait for hours in hospitals for the arrival of an interpreter. Dr.
Daniel Ofri, internal medical at Manhattan’s Bellevue hospital, tells us that the situation was little more than a nightmare in terms of confidentiality and the high probability that serious errors of communication diesen. We depended on who you were available, either a bilingual employee, a cousin, a child of six years who speaks both languages, or any family member from your mobile phone. So many things so little adequate, but had no choice – Ofri remembers. In 2003, with the increase in immigration, activists of the sector began to lodge complaints against hospitals with the Office of the Attorney general of the State of New York, claiming that without appropriate medical interpretation services, immigrants would not enjoy equal access to health care. Nisha Agarwal, lawyer in the organization New York Lawyers for the Public Interest lawyers of New York by the public interest, says: do not provide access to language interpretation services is how to practice veterinary medicine. Choose randomly what needs to be done rather than having a conversation with the patient. In 2006, New York State adopted regulations requiring all hospitals to provide free interpreter services for patients in the first 10 minutes of their arrival in the emergency room, or in the first 20 minutes in the rest of the hospital wards. The City Council has taken additional measures. In 2008, Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered all public hospitals to have a language access plan. Autumn of this year, the main chains of pharmacies are obliged to translate recipes into seven most widely spoken languages in the city.