Gayle Tang remembers the time she thought she was speaking English but only realized she had lapsed into Cantonese when one of her doctors spoke it back to her.
That was 14 years ago, but she recalls the uneasy feeling of not knowing what was wrong with her and undergoing tests for heart palpitations. The doctor's words in the language she needed to hear and speak at that sensitive time moved her, she said.
"It was very natural, very comforting," Tang said. "I was able to express myself and it was emotional. I felt, wow this person really cared about me."
The experience gave Tang insight into what patients who speak languages other than English may face when they're frightened and in the throes of medical treatment.
"It's very exhausting to try to communicate your most personal information in a language you may not be as comfortable in when you're under stress," said Tang, director of national linguistic & cultural programs for Kaiser Permanente in Oakland.
"When people are under duress, they may lose their language skills," she said. "It's not like going to the bank and making a banking transaction or going to the grocery store and buying food."
Kaiser Permanente has been on the forefront of a movement toward greater linguistic and cultural competence in health care. Kaiser routinely asks patients which language they prefer to speak, and developed a voluntary physician assessment tool that lets health-care organizations determine if doctors have enough foreign-language proficiency to speak with patients in that language independent of an interpreter. About 1,000 doctors have taken the test so far.
As the nation's population grows and ages, the demand for language services in hospitals, doctor's offices and other health-care arenas is booming, experts say.
Federal law mandates that any entity that receives federal funding, whether it's Medicare reimbursement or research grants, must provide a patient with limited English proficiency an interpreter at no cost to the patient. In early 2009, California enacted a language-services law requiring all health plans and insurers to provide an interpreter for limited-English speaking patients at no cost to the patients.
The House of Representatives' health-reform bill calls for a study into how the Medicare program makes use of language services for beneficiaries who have limited English proficiency. If a health-care overhaul expands coverage as promised, an influx of newly insured people into the Medicaid program also may increase demand for medical interpreters.
An estimated 15,000 to 17,000 people perform medical interpreting work in the U.S., according to Common Sense Advisory, a Boston-based research firm. Interpreters typically earn $15 to $30 an hour.
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This article shows how important learning a second language can be. We need more interpeturs in our world.
Posted by: Foreign Language Learner | January 23, 2011 at 09:54 PM