Webcam helps to break the language barrier

A webcam system is helping emergency room personnel at Iasis Healthcare's three Arizona hospitals to treat patients who either can't speak English or are hearing impaired.

Before the system was introduced, the hospitals relied on a telephone interpreter to help patients who spoke only Spanish, and if a patient was deaf, the staff would scramble to find someone who knew sign language.

But now, at Mountain Vista Medical Center in east Mesa, the system is helping ER personnel respond quicker to patients who can't speak English, said April Hayes, ER director.

"This technology is a little bit more unique because the patient can actually see the interpreter and the interpreter can see the patient," she said. "We've made it to where that patient has a little more personalization."

Iasis has a contract with Language Assistance Telemedicine Inc. at Houston Medical Center. It provides the computer equipment for the webcam system and has a staff of translators standing by at any hour to handle medical videoconferencing.

"Many of the people who actually are doing the translation are physicians (from) Mexico or Spain," Hayes said. "They're looking to do all their leveling classes so that they can become physicians here, so they do this on the side and help us translate. They also have nurses who are trained in foreign countries."

Mountain Vista regularly treats patients who speak only Spanish, and it can be a challenge to fully communicate all of the necessary information to them, Hayes said.

"Two days ago ... we had a 12-year-old boy who came in with his parents, and his parents spoke very little English," she said. "The boy spoke English perfectly, but again he is not an adult and I need to still be able to translate back to his parents all the medication instructions and things like that. Even though he could understand and probably interpret it back to his parents, that still doesn't give me a lot of satisfaction that he can do it the correct way."

Renee Little, a physician assistant in the Mountain Vista ER, recalls that the webcam helped ease one particular hearing-impaired patient who was difficult to treat because she was so upset.

"I know she was really scared, and the person who was doing the signing on the other end actually helped calm her fears, and was able to translate and help her better understand what was wrong with her," she said. "So she was more at ease and that helped us ... get to the bottom of what was going on."

There's a big difference between talking to an interpreter over the telephone and speaking face-to-face via webcam, Little said. Also, trying to communicate with the hearing impaired through writing can be tedious, she said.

"I think it helps the patient feel at ease and it also helps them know that you can better communicate instead of having someone on the other end of the phone that they can't see," she said. "It's hard to trust somebody you can't see. It helps them have a little more trust and maybe they'll confide a little more than they normally would."

For now, if a patient comes to the hospital speaking only Japanese or Portuguese, for instance, the telephone interpreter system is available, but more languages will be added to the webcam system in the coming months, Hayes said.

"We haven't really had the need for any other (languages) just yet, but that doesn't meant that we will not," she said. "It would be nice if we had it available."