DIVERSITY IN THE MEDICAL INTERPRETER FIELD.
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ABSTRACT.
This paper serves to provide an approach to the reduction of cultural, ethnic, and racial health disparities in the field of medical interpretation. It focuses on the strategic methods in improving the delivery of health services to a diverse population through the cultural competence tool. This paper extends its discussion to other ways which have helped towards achieving excellent healthcare services that are inclusive of training, use of community health workers, immersion into another culture recruitment and retention of policies. The strategies would theoretically demonstrate how helpful they will be in the delivery of health services to the diverse population which would directly or indirectly improve on the outcomes and reducing if not wholly ending the bold disparities. Cultural competence emerges as a significant route to the solution as it reflects on the importance of culture in the public service and in particular, medical services delivery.
The aspects of social culture, religion, ethnicity and race pose an intensively critical challenge in the medical interpretation of the useful health information to people of different tongues and backgrounds. Therefore it has called to the formulation of a conceptual strategy that’s is capable of dealing with the challenge in question.
Conventionally, it’s the right of every individual to have access to quality public services regardless of the pre-existing cultural, religious, racial and ethnic disparities. However, there is a likelihood that despite the latter being true, language barriers come in as a critical bottleneck in the dispensing of health services. Research on this problem has inferred that cultural competency serves the best amongst other strategies though some few if not many challenges have been realized along.
INTRODUCTION
Health systems and policymakers have encountered a substantial challenge in making sure that the health care provided to the diverse population takes into account their cultural and linguistic requirements. It follows that whenever the policymakers converge, they’re needed to do a thorough evaluation of the community of their target as a way to avoid unnecessary spends due to the absence of a coordinated strategy.
Culture is “the integrated pattern of human behaviour that includes thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs values and institutions of a racial, ethnic, religious or social group”, and is relevant to everyone’s healthcare. All these aspects of culture carry a substantial meaning in the sector of public services and in particular healthcare service, whereby they’re required to have the relevant information reaching to every individual.
Despite being a young discipline, interpreting studies have benefited from a blooming advancement in the recent decade, all credit to the immigration factor that has led to a mixture of people from different origins. Healthcare interpreting stands out to be a significant component of community interpreting. However, this sub-field of interpreting studies lack transparency and clear visibility. Therefore this review attempts to relook on the advances and drawbacks of medical interpreting studies and lay suggestive directions on future studies in this field.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Even though healthcare interpreting is a subfield, a variety of reasons makes it occupy almost the very highest position in the general domain of public service interpreting. Its unique features make it stand out from other sub-fields. Fast forward, the development of medical interpreting has resulted from legal development, and majorly in European countries and North America, This practice has been conjoined with the socio-political and socio-cultural. These countries, however, have suffered a fluctuated government support in ensuring the rights and interests of patients with limited English proficiency have access to healthcare interpreting services.
Additionally, the healthcare service venues have a difference as the sites consist of one of the determining factors in the purpose of communication, the context of the conversation and the consequences of miscommunication. On top of that, healthcare interpreting encompasses a broad range of specialities which have their norms and standards. Some specialities, for instance, mental health, may need a prompt specialist from both service providers and interpreters as compared to real specialities. Therefore it concludes that the speciality specificity constitutes a significant feature of medical interpreting.
Following the above-outlined features of healthcare interpreting, it’s essential to point out that there are several complexities and challenges that medical interpreters encounter as a result of the diversity in the field. To start with is the aspect of the race. The race is a large group of people distinguishable from others based on their physique, such as skin colour or hair type. Racial minorities tend to receive a lower quality of care than non-minorities leading to a higher mortality rate in the minority group, despite the significant advances in the diagnosis and treatment of most chronic infections. Some of the races, for example, the whites tend to have biased healthcare whereby even the health facilities of the highest rank are made available. The blacks are regarded as minor and inferior, and so is the type of healthcare service offered to them.
Ethnicity is another factor that dominates in the medical interpreting field. Different ethnic groups receive services differently and with a lot more of ethnic bias. Some ethnic groups such as Africans, African- Americans are considered minor in the current society, which makes them receive poor quality healthcare service as compared to the natives of Europe. Different ethnic groups come along with the language of their tongue, and this has severely affected the way healthcare services are being delivered, as the healthcare providers have to familiarize with a different style to create a corporate understanding between the two parties.
Religion is an additional aspect that comes in handy when we talk about healthcare services. Religions may dictate the way people behave and interact with each other and reprimanding other types of acts. Typically, some beliefs restrain some people from taking drugs or receiving any form of treatment which poses a challenge in the delivery of healthcare services, including the medical interpreting field. What people eat, put on, and so forth can be subject to religious beliefs. And eating could be a source of a variety of diseases which need to be addressed by medical expertise. People could succumb to death without knowledge that health conditions can be medically dealt with.
Additionally, in the same field, it has been noted that there is diversity in the level of knowledge and the form of knowledge that people have. Some marginalized communities completely lack any sort of experience that concerns healthcare. From as low as general hygiene to taking care of their bodies is a strange tale to them. Before bringing in the news of the health advances to people of that calibre, there is a need for the introduction of essential hygiene habit to pave the way for new knowledge and skills regarding good health. In other words, people with such a heightened level of ignorance will always pose a challenge to the healthcare providers due to a deficit of relevant knowledge. Educative strategies and training moves should be undertaken in an attempt to eliminate ignorance levels.
Accessibility falls categorically under the challenges that the healthcare interpreters face in an attempt to reach out to everyone. The geographical barriers like poor roads, together with movement hardships, have been a bottleneck in the overall delivery of healthcare services.
FINDINGS.
Cultural competence, as it has been stated earlier, is a tool that can be applied with an attempt to outdo the technical disparities in the healthcare service sector. It has offered a variety of ways to get the dream in question achieved. For instance, there are numerous approaches to interpreter services, including on-site professional interpreters and simultaneous remote interpretations using earphones and microphones with off-site professional interpreters (Hornberger et al. 1996).
It advocates for recruitment and retention strategy, whereby, minority staff can improve communication, create a warm environment, and design health systems to reflect more appealingly the needs of minority communities (Cooper-Patrick et al. 1999). Techniques involved in recruiting and retaining minority group members and in health systems include setting up minority residency, hiring minority search firms, adapting personnel policy to create a comfortable and welcoming workplace for minority group members, mentoring minority employees by senior executives, expanding on traditional affirmative action programs aimed at attracting employees who match the race and ethnicity of the patient populations, establishing a set of principle guides for respectful treatment for all people
Cultural competency training programs target the increase of cultural awareness, knowledge, and skills leading to changes in patient-staff interactions. The diversity within racial or ethnic groups and the complexity of the associated subcultures make cultural competency training appropriate for all health system staff, including members of minority groups. Practice can be focused on increasing knowledge about a particular minority group. It can also be useful in targeting on a specific task such as working with interpreters.
Another approach is about coordination with traditional healers; for example, many minority Americans use traditional healers alongside seeking biomedical care (Marbella et al. 1998; Skaer et al. 1996). Clinicians should try to cooperate with the conventional specialist to avoid complications due to incompatible therapies.
Use of community health workers can also serve to achieve the objective of reaching out to other community members as well as to provide direct services such as health education and primary care. Also involving families and community leaders may be crucial in obtaining consent for and adherence to treatment.
CONCLUSION.
The existence of major racial and ethnic diversities in healthcare interpreting program and the whole sector as a whole displays a profound problem that require multiple approaches.
If the careful and appropriate implementation of sound cultural competency measures are employed in delivering health services, could serve as an uplift in reducing disparities in this field.
REFERENCE.
Liu, Y., & Zhang, W. (2019). Unity in diversity: mapping healthcare interpreting studies (2007-2017). Medical education online, 24(1), 1579559.
Santhanam, S. P., Gilbert, C. L., & Parveen, S. (2019). Speech-Language Pathologists’ Use of