E-ging Solutions is a world-leading Shanghai translation company with specialties in Hospital Documents translation.

We live in an increasingly interconnected culture, so interconnected in fact, that we promote tourism to cities that are already cultural melting pots. The United States is particularly diverse, especially where language is concerned. As such, there has been a growing need for translation and interpretation in medical settings.

Doctors offices, hospitals, and other medical facilities the world over are becoming more and more adept at serving a diverse array of patients’ needs and accommodating non-English-speaking patients. In fact, according to Journal News, several hospitals in the Midwest have joined the growing number of medical facilities that employ video remote interpreting services to assist patients who speak little or no English.

It can be a great comfort to non-English-speaking patients to hear their native tongue, particularly if they are in a hospital without the support of their family. They might be frightened and confused, and a gesture as seemingly small as making sure they understand everything that’s going on can have huge health benefits for the patient.

But the necessity for medical translation and medical device translation extends even beyond the notion of patient care. Medical document translators can help doctors who receive patient information from other non-English-speaking countries.

So the need for medical document translation is as important for the doctor as it is for the patient. And the bottom line is that having a strong medical document and device translation plan in place allows hospitals to reach potential patients who would not have previously visited the facility. More languages mean more patients.

But for hospitals, doctors offices, and other medical facilities who are new to the idea of medical document translation, they may not know where to begin, and a facility’s budget may be limited. So here are the absolutely essential documents that need to be translated in the medical community.

1. Website and Marketing Materials. It is absolutely imperative for hospitals, doctors offices, and other medical facilities to allow for translation into numerous languages so that they can reach the full breadth of their potential patients.

Websites allow potential patients to get a sense of the type of care they can expect at your facility, and having that information available to a patient in his or her native language will go a long way toward making that patient feel more comfortable.

Websites also serve as the first place people go to find information on a hospital or doctor, so optimizing and/or localizing your website into the languages prevalent in your geographic area is of the utmost importance.

2. Signage. This is particularly important in larger hospitals and medical facilities, but signage everywhere should be available in multiple languages. The hospital or clinic should choose the most common languages that the facility serves in order to help patients feel at ease as they navigate the space.

Hospital stays can be stressful enough without a patient having to worry about getting lost or stumbling into the wrong room. This type of translation also aids the doctors and other staff members, as a patient who can find their own way around is less likely to stumble into a place where they shouldn’t be.

3. Patient Intake and Information Forms. For better or worse, the medical community is one of seemingly endless paperwork. Some of the most important things to translate are patients’ intake and information forms, and this has to happen at both ends: The forms need to be in a patient’s native tongue, and translation needs to be made available for the completed form into the language of the physician.

Likewise, forms from foreign clinics, hospitals, and doctors offices need to be translated for the doctors in order to give the team a full picture of the patient’s health and history.

4. Clinical Trial documents. These types of documents always need to be available in the participants’ and audience’s native language. Clinical trials are at the forefront of medical development, producing profoundly valuable information about new courses of care for a myriad of illnesses.

Anyone, regardless of their native language, who is considering experimental treatment needs to be made fully aware of the risks — and possible rewards — involved in embarking on such a path. Clinical trial document translation will ensure that there are no gaps in communication.

5. Informed Consent Forms. How informed can a patient really be if they are being informed in a language that they are not fluent in? In any case, when a patient is giving consent to a medical or surgical procedure, a clinical trial, or to participate in a medical study, he or she needs to be fully aware of what is being agreed to.

Informed consent form translation is the only way to communicate such pertinent information in a thorough and accurate way.

6. Prescription Labels. When a non-English-speaking patient receives their care, they are often left with a prescription of one form or another that they have to administer themselves.

It is vital, then, that the prescription labels and accompanying documentation are translated into the patient’s native tongue so that they understand completely what kind of drug interactions, if any, their medication might have, when to take it, whether or not to avoid alcohol, or take it with food, or to avoid using machinery, etc.

Patients need to have a comprehensive understanding of their course of care, and that can only happen with prescription label translation into their native languages.

Conclusion

Any hospital or medical facility that serves a diverse population needs to be prepared to communicate with speakers of numerous languages, and needs to have important information readily available in all of their patients’ native tongues.