Education and debate

How To Do It: Work with an interpreter

^a Institute of Psychiatry, London SE5 8AF

Correspondence to: Dr M Phelan, Charing Cross Hospital, London W6 8RF.

The Audit Commission recently highlighted the need for health services to plan language services to help the problems of poor communication facing non-English speaking patients. Doctors and other health workers need to know how to work effectively when interviewing patients with an interpreter. This article describes the different options for helping non-English speaking patients; explains how interviews should be conducted with a trained interpreter, including those using sign language; and outlines the extent of interpreting services currently available in the United Kingdom, complete with a list of addresses of organisations offering interpreting services.

Patients whose first language is not English may face difficulties in being understood and in understanding diagnoses. To help such patients the health service needs to provide language services,¹ which are largely of four types.

Bilingual health workers--These workers remove the . . . [Full text of this article]

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