CLAS Standards Mod 5 Case

Medical Interpretation Student Name: Course: Instructor: Institution: Date Due: As the number of non-English speaking immigrants continues to increase in the US the need for medical interpretation has tremendously increased in order to help communicate with no-English speaking persons. This is mainly motivated by the federal requirements to provide qualified medical interpreters for medical institutions receiving federal funding (Flores et al. 2003). However, there is a range of medical language interpretation methods which can be categorized into two: optimal and sub optimal. The optimal medical language interpretation involves hiring qualified medical interpreters, using telephone interpretation and contracting with outside interpreting agency. In addition, the sub optimal medical language interpretation involves hiring bilingual staff, family member and community volunteers (Hornberger et al. 1996). Among these methods the first three are highly preferred while the latter three are not due to their detrimental effects. For instance, in using qualified medical interpreters and telephone interpretation there is privacy and confidentiality and ethics are maintained while using bilingual staff and family members may not be conversant with medical terminologies or the patients may not want to disclose some information in the presence of family members. Moreover, the community volunteers may be biased thereby interfering with effective medication. Telephone interpretation involves having the patient, caregiver and the patient on phone at the same time and different modalities may be utilized such as two headed phones (cryophones), AT&T language line and speaker phones (Kuo & Fagin, 1999; Timmins, 2002). Among these wide range medical language interpretation methods the one which is considered “best practice” is the use of qualified medical language interpreters. This is because they are proven to be linguistically competent in English and another language. They are also conversant with medical terminology hence they will grasp every detail of physician’s information. Qualified medical interpreters have also undergone training in ethics, confidentiality, impartiality, professionalism, liability of interpretation and have received ongoing training (Flores et al. 2003). However, in some states the qualified medical interpreters undergo certification even though not all. There are various organizations’ legal responsibilities to provide qualified language interpretation to patients and families for hospitals receiving federal funding or those under Medicare or Medicaid program. This include the Culturally and Li...