Prompt 4: Communicating Across Borders

On Monday, September 26th, we were fortunate enough to have a guest speaker who works at the University of Kentucky hospital. The guest speaker’s name was Sarah Hessler and her reason for visiting us was to share with us the frequent global and cultural issue that arises in medical facilities across the world. This issue is the language barrier between medical faculty and patients. University of Kentucky’s hospital and many hospitals around the world deal with the issue of individuals that come to the hospital to seek aid but can’t because there is a language barrier. Because of this communication problem, doctors and nurses cannot give the best and optimal treatment without understanding the problem in the best way possible. As stated by Sarah Hessler, 23% of the population of Lexington speaks other than English at home. It is estimated around 195 languages and potentially more are spoken in Lexington. Hessler mentions how Lexington can be considered a linguistic community because UK Healthcare receives over 2,000 LEP/ASL patients every week and 103 languages are spoken give or take in that week. Hessler emphasizes how healthcare systems need to support effective communication and access to all its patient. Some points that she mentions about this is to notify patients of all language services provided for them to make the conversation between patients and staff easier. They should also be informed that this service comes free of charge with trained professional medical interpreters and translators. Trying to avoid using patients’ family/friends as the baseline for communication because there could always be some fault in that. It is best to hear the issue and the reason for seeking by the patient themselves. Some way to offer better language services is to provide on-site staff for high-volume languages. If that is not possible at that time, providing video remote interpreting and phone interpreting access to eliminate the issue of language barriers. If all this is not possible, providing in-language text is the only possible way to help with this gap in communication. 

        If our speaker Sarah Hessler was to take a job with the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, her duties would be the same as it is, but she would have to deal with a whole new environment, different situations than she has dealt with, and dealing with new cultures she may have never experienced. As for what some of her tasks should be, it would be to connect translators to individuals that match their language, and this is not provided at no cost. She would also have to ensure that no rules or regulations are broken when there is a communication problem. As for her services, Hessler could create informative posters and flyers in the different languages spoken in those areas to help people understand the benefits of being vaccinated against polio. Not only that, but she can also gather people in the community in these small towns and cities and ask them to help her inform people that may not see the benefits right now.