Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog

I use foreign language assist all shift long in my practice. Costs range from $3 to $5 a minute. Some calls can last 20 minutes. We also have in-house Spanish language assist. I would caution anyone to refrain from using family members or other untrained, uncertified staff from translating for you. The article refers to young children translating for older family members. This is a bad practice, to place the onus of translating complicated medical information onto a child. There are cultures where children play a primary role to speak for older family members, however, they are adults themselves. I do not even like to use older family members either, unless I'm confident they will ask the exact same questions I ask and communicate back exactly what was told to them. Wherever possible, in the long run, while this is an expensive service, use certified translators who are trained to understand why they have to translate as closely as possible what is being communicated in an interaction.
 

Is the Pope Catholic?
 

It doesn't cost me anything except in lost revenue because I don't do it. When I did it, I insisted on using trained interpretors and doing it right, but they are not reliably available in my community. There are physicians in my specialty in every major non-english speaking group in the area so I refer now. Some of them whine about it but I think it is a small price to pay for being allowed to immigrate to and practice medicine in the greatest country in the world. I also think learning English is a small price to pay for being allowed to live here and if people don't bother to do so then they can't expect to commerce with the natives, of which I am one. Whenever I have done business in Mexico, I have used Spanish.

I don't take medicaid or medicare so the government can't make me.
 

Ironically, as a native born American, with so many foreign-born doctors who practice here, I feel I need an interpreter to understand physicians.