What Would You Do With Mary?

Mary is a 37 year old female with various learning disabilities. Mary still lives at home with her sister as she fears to be independent. Mary attends a day centre 5 days a week where she can socialise with other people and gain more independence as an individual. Mary has a brother who regularly visit, her mother sadly died two years ago and her father left when Mary was a teenager. Mary’s father sexually and physically abused her when she was a child, this abuse was on-going for about 8 years. When her mother found out about this through Marys sister, she confronted her husband, he swiftly denied it and left the soon after. Marys never heard from her father again after he left. Mary has been attending the day centre since she left school when she was 18, she has made significant progress throughout according to her key

The Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Act 2006, despite having good intentions was criticized for its ‘friendly parent provisions’, which deterred women from raising issues of domestic violence. In response to this, the government passed the Family Law Amendment (Family Violence and other Measures) Act (2011), which stipulated that family violence be a key consideration in deciding who the residential parent was to be. However, Adivia Sifiris in the ‘Right Now’ article “Impacts of Family Law Amendments” criticized the mediation process, stating that violent spouses are still able to intimidate. Thus, despite the resource efficiency of mediation processes (‘$3000 a mediation session compared to a $10,000 day trial’, February 2012, SMH), further work needs to be done in order to ensure that the resolution to disputes protects the rights of the vulnerable spouse.

In 2004 my grandmother and I moved from Haiti to United States without a speck of English in our language. After few years living in the states, my grandma started to get ill and she had to seek monthly medical assistance. At the time, my mother was working multiple jobs and I was a full time undergrad student that lived on college campus. Our busy schedule posed a challenge for us to bring grandma to her medical appointments. Most times it was hard for us to find someone to go with her and assist her with language translation. When it was time for her to go by herself, the health providers would have trouble finding a professional translator on the spot to assist my grandma. This became a repetitive problem and my grandma’s case was not getting any better. If she had the ability to communicate with her provider using her own language, she would have been able to be more expressive about her symptoms and the doctors would have assisted her to her needs. Just like my grandma, many people that speaks little to no English, are having trouble interpreting their medical diagnosis and communicating with their healthcare providers.

Language is one social and cultural barriers that may have made it difficult for the doctors to communicate with Jessica’s family. It creates the trust that exists between a patient and a doctor and their guardians. When using a translator, meanings may change and the desired communication result may not be achieved. The trust that should exist between the doctor and the patient and the guardians

True or false: If treating a patient who does not speak English, it is preferable to use a family member to interpret, rather than a translator, as they have a better understanding of the patient’s home life and the progression/onset of their injury.

Lor et al. (2016) examined the growing problem of language barriers for patients in the United States and around the world. The use of interpreters is often the solution to bridge the gap between languages. The purpose of this study was to examine patient perception of interpreter services.The population for this study included 10 English proficient Hmong patients and 10 Spanish speaking patients. The participants ranged from age 33 to 75 years old. The intervention was that poor quality interpretation could lead to poor relationships among patients, interpreters and providers. In addition poor interpretation could end up in the patient being unable to follow through with treatment plans. Lastly, poor quality interpretation can lead to emotional distress for patients. Comparison was that patients have expectations on how the

(1997). The spirit catches you and you fall down: A Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Karliner, L. S., Jacobs, E. A., Chen, A. H., & Mutha, S. (2007). Do professional interpreters improve clinical care for patients with limited english proficiency?

This for example could mean the support of an individual who is deaf and needs to find other ways to express their needs and preferences. A health and social care service provider could put the service user in touch with British Sign Language interpreters, Deaf-blind interpreters, lip-speakers, note-takers and speech-to-text reporters. Another reason that an individual may need this kind of support is if they do not speak English and require an interpreter. This is particularly common in hospitals. The interpreter may be a friend or relative or even a person specifically hired to be an interpreter in health

- She requests a social worker bilingual, in the way to have a healthy relationship.

Consequently, the need for qualified interpreters in the clinical settings is of great essence in the reduction of

Jacobs, E. A., Shepard, D. S., Suaya, J. A., Stone, E. (2004). Overcoming language barriers in health care: costs and benefits of interpreter services. American Journal of Public Health, 94 (5), 866-869.

The staff person did not take the correct approach in trying to communicate with the patient. The staff person should have made an effort to obtain a trained interpreter to speak with the patient. If unable to do this, the staff person could have sought to find a staff member who spoke Spanish. However, after touching basis on what the patient is seeking care for, a trained interpreter should be obtained. It is not appropriate to use family members as interpreters since this can result in a breach of confidentiality and misunderstanding of information. The patient son is also a minor, which is another reason he should not be used as an interpreter. This situation was not an emergency that required immediate need of a translator, thus an appropriate interpreter would have been the best approach.

Unlike with Dalmar who has a Somali background, as a practitioner, I would need to consider the client’s English comprehension abilities as he/she may not speak English and hence, would need to consider using an interpreter’s services for the meeting. This is because for clients from indigenous backgrounds, English may only be their 2nd or 3rd language and hence their comprehension levels may not be the same as native English speakers. This creates a language barrier that is often misinterpreted as a lack of ‘understanding’ by practitioners.

During the study, Davidson said that the scarcity of time become the factor of the patient in medical interview. It is because the patients who used interpreter often were left alone for sometimes an hour while they waited for the interpreter to arrive (Baker, 2010 p.160). Moreover, Davidson said that the interpreters are possibly conducted the interview with the patient before the physician arrived (Baker, 2010 p.160). They took a charge of physician’s position by asking questions the patient about the illness before they convey it to the physician. This affects the process of elaborating a Chief Complaint from patient which becomes shorter. Besides, the interpreters also would occasionally go so far as to conduct the initial portions of the interviews itself. According to Davidson in Baker (2010, p.164) the interferences of interpreter in medical interview create harms for the physician. For instance, in

This woman only understood and spoke Gujarati, and throughout her pregnancy either interpreters were used, or family to translate. Use of relatives or friends as interpreters during sensitive consultations is not recommended (Lewis, 2007). This automatically puts this woman at higher risk as things could have been missed and especially as we did not have a full obstetric history of this woman.