NHS spends £130k a day on translations for non-English speaking patients.

Thank you - PaynesGrey

Media Attacks on NHS Translation and Diversity Spending Completely Miss the Point of the Health Service

Albeit from last year, a balanced, explanatory piece from David Oliver as an antidote to the usual tabloid hysteria and outrage.

Oliver is an NHS Consultant in Geriatrics and General Internal Medicine. He is a former National Clinical Director for Older People in the Social Care Division of the Department of Health and former President of the British Geriatrics Society. He looks after many older people who require social care and works closely with social care teams. He has a weekly column in the British Medical Journal.

bylinetimes.com/2024/04/04/nhs-woke-attacks-translation-diversity-equality/

Extracts:

Citizens or legal residents who don’t speak fluent or even basic English are, just like people with hearing loss, learning disabilities or cognitive impairment, as entitled to NHS care as the rest of the population. And there is already considerable evidence that they are not getting it, with health and healthcare access inequalities between different ethnic communities.

Denying people written information in their own language will only make matters worse.

When people who are sick, scared, vulnerable, distressed or have symptoms to discuss, treatments to understand, or complex psychosocial factors to explain, how can the quality and safety of the care they receive be improved if they can neither express nor understand key information?

There are also legal considerations. To provide valid consent to treatment in common law, patients must have sufficient information about the details, risks, potential harms and benefits of a proposed treatment (which could in some cases involve major surgery, powerful drugs or admission to intensive care). Language barriers must be overcome to make this a reality.

Regulatory codes of practice for healthcare professionals are also clear that we must treat people equally, irrespective of characteristics including race, religion or nationality.

Using AI translation apps of variable reliability has its limits in a time-critical or emotionally-charged and challenging situation. And relying on family or friends to translate isn’t always possible as not every patient is accompanied. If they are discussing personally sensitive or intimate information, they may be inhibited from doing so. If there are safeguarding concerns regarding abuse or neglect one could suspect the person translating of being coercive when doing so.

This sounds like yet another FGT Daily Mail headline designed to provoke division in society.

I expect when it's broken down, the figure quoted includes BSL interpreters for deaf patients, help for blind and partially sighted people and other similar assistance for people with communication difficulties and learning difficulties but maybe we shouldn't be 'pandering' to people who can't fend for themselves?

AI Overview
Yes, the French health service has some professional interpreter services, but they are not universally available or consistently implemented. While public hospitals may offer these services, their availability can be limited due to costs and time constraints. You may also find private language service providers, Aalia tech, that provide real-time translation for patients not fluent in French, or individual doctors willing to offer translation for an additional fee.
Official Interpreter Services:
Hospital-Based Services:
Public hospitals may have systems for providing professional interpreters, but this is not guaranteed and may be limited.
Health Authority Guidelines:
In 2017, the French Health Authority released guidelines for the use of interpreters in healthcare settings, but their implementation remains irregular.

escaped

Here in France there are maybe 4 hospitals in Paris which provide English speaking staff. This is not the case for the rest of the country.
You either:
Bring someone with you who can assist you with communication
Muddle by with the basic English that French doctors and nurses learn as part of their course
Use an online translating service like Luckygirl suggests
Or accept you are in a foreign country and put up with the situation.

I used to accompany people to hospital in France, or do the emergency dash with them. The going rate for a translator in this case is around 60 euros an hour. I did it for free.

£130,000 a day sounds like an extortionate sum if correct.

Having spent much of the last three years dealing with DH's serious illnesses in a number of hospital departments in France (not Paris), I don't entirely agree with that. We both speak fluent French, but frequently meet doctors who speak very good English, because they have spent years living in English speaking countries; including bilingual doctors with an English parent.
We tend to prepare updates for doctors in English and translate them, because the complexities of serious conditions are not part of everyday vocabulary and the nuances are important. It isn't easy.

Yet another topic on which we profoundly disagree FriedGreenTomatoes2. Google translate is not adequate in an emergency or a situation where somebody has complex medical conditions, it does not interpret medical terminology. It’s erroneous to compare UK citizens attending for care in Europe, because is the second language for the majority of Europeans, what happens in France when somebody who speaks no European languages is in an emergency situation is a more relevant comparator. I will try to find out.

Agree FGT
I met a a friend of a friend, whilst in France this spring ,A private translator for mainly English ex pats

She is very busy.
She translates paperwork as well as verbal translation.
Accompanies clients to medical appointments, also legal appointments, especially appointments with local Mayors . French paperwork is something else.

Here in France there are maybe 4 hospitals in Paris which provide English speaking staff. This is not the case for the rest of the country.
You either:
Bring someone with you who can assist you with communication
Muddle by with the basic English that French doctors and nurses learn as part of their course
Use an online translating service like Luckygirl suggests
Or accept you are in a foreign country and put up with the situation.

I used to accompany people to hospital in France, or do the emergency dash with them. The going rate for a translator in this case is around 60 euros an hour. I did it for free.

£130,000 a day sounds like an extortionate sum if correct.

Given that the NHS is legally obligated to provide care to all users in a language they can understand, what alternative do you suggest?

Or that we change its remit?
European countries with fantastic healthcare (often with better outcomes than ours) don’t pander to their patients like this.

Just us mugs.

Hmm. That they bring a friend Casdon who can interpret for them? A novel idea I know.

Or as most people have a smartphone, Google Translate.

I wonder what Wes Streeting makes of it all?

What I think is that the NHS has over 1.7 million patient contacts every day, of which according to your source £130k is spent on translation. That is very little as a proportion of the NHS expenditure isn’t it? Given that the NHS is legally obligated to provide care to all users in a language they can understand, what alternative do you suggest?

Google Translate seems the way to go.

If that monetary figure is correct then I’m horrified! A translater should only be involved in the rare case that there’s no relative or friend at all to accompany them to hospital.
The waste of money in the NHS is legendary tho, there seems no will to try and do things in a cheaper way at all.