When I interact with patients, I am so eager to tell them everything they need to know about their medical condition, what I am planning to do, what they need to do and so on. While this is a wonderful thing, when I am dealing with patients with limited health literacy and English fluency, I need to work with a medical interpreter (MI) to communicate with the patient. In communicating with the MI, it is important to follow the two sentence rule. Watch the microlecture to find out about more the two sentence rule.
VJ Periyakoil, MD, Stanford University School of Medicine. Tweet to us: @palliator
practical tips
Microlecture 004: Talk Directly To The Patient
This microlecture addresses patient rights. If the patient has Limited English Proficiency., don’t they still have the right to access all the information about their healthcare? Don’t they still have the right to take advantage of the therapeutic bond that should exist between every doctor and the patient? How can we decrease the psychological distance between the clinician and the patient? What are some simple steps we can take?
VJ Periyakoil, MD, Stanford University School of Medicine. Tweet to us: @palliator
Microlecture 007: The Low Register Rule
Take a guess! Do doctors speak in low register or high register?
Should the medical interpreter alter the register during translation to make sure the patient understands? Or, should they pause and ask the doctor to restate the information?
VJ Periyakoil, MD, Stanford University School of Medicine. Tweet to us: @palliator
Microlecture 008: Consecutive Interpretation Rule
Do you know that there are different styles of interpretation? What is simultaneous interpretation? What is consecutive interpretation? Which one is better in a clinical encounter? What are the tradeoffs? Which is the preferred method in a clinical encounter when you are pressed for time?
VJ Periyakoil, MD, Stanford University School of Medicine. Tweet to us: @palliator
Microlecture 011: How To Recruit Multi-Ethnic Patients Into Clinical Research
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When you look at most large research studies, you will often find a common trend– most of the study participants are mainstream patients. Few ethnic patients enroll in research studies. The reasons for this are many and complex.
There are certainly implicit biases on the part of all stakeholders. The researchers may feel that ethnic patients are unlikely to enroll in their study and so do not want to spend a lot of time recruiting them. Ethnic patients may feel that researchers are not to be trusted and may worry that they are being experimented upon.
In thinking about this issue, I feel that most large studies are publicly funded i.e. funded by NIH from our tax dollars. If we do not participate in the studies, then the results may be less relevant in the future for our specific ethnic group or population– or we may be in the dark about specific effects and side effects of common medications and important interventions in certain groups.
There is just one way for all cultural groups to shape research and to reap the full benefits of research findings and that is if we participate in the research protocols to the extent we can.
Watch the video to learn more about this topic.
VJ Periyakoil, MD, Stanford University School of Medicine.
Tweet to us: @palliator
