Thursday, March 12, 2015

Translation Frustration in healthcare

From the magazine "Scientific American", March 2015, we learn this,

Two Internet interpreters tested Google translate's abilities with 10 common American medical phrases. Phrases such as "your husband had a heart attack", "your wife is stable", and "your wife needs to be ventilated" were tested to translate into 26 different languages.

As an example, "your husband had a heart attack" was translated in several languages as your "husband's heart was attacked". "Your wife need to be ventilated" with translated to "your wife needs to be aired".

The Message to the Physical Therapist in me;

Careful to what you say to what you think you said.
Careful to how you say what you say.

Sometimes the folks around you may think they heard different than what you intended, and giving what we do as Physical Therapist, its important to communicate your message with simplicity, transparency, while getting affirmation of your message.