Finding a competent medical translation service is crucial when you’re working with patients with a poor command of English. On one hand, this can significantly streamline your care for those patients and can help you ensure that nothing gets lost in translation. On the other, it also helps you ensure that you’re fulfilling your legal obligations in certain regards.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of working with a qualified medical translation service. There are many challenges in this field, and only someone with sufficient relevant experience can help you tackle them and guarantee a smooth experience. Let’s take a look at some of the most common problems medical translators face.
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Specialized Terminology
The healthcare field is full of specialized terminology and advanced jargon. This may be straightforward to an experienced healthcare practitioner as well as a patient who’s been treated for some time, but it often presents a significant barrier in the communication with new patients.
A good medical translation service will help you ensure that you and your patients are always on the same page. Your chosen translation specialists will understand the exact implications of the language they’re using, and will identify the best way to convert something into another language without losing any of the underlying meaning.
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Heavy Use of Abbreviations
On top of medical jargon, the healthcare field also has a serious issue with the constant use of abbreviations. This is especially common in communication between physicians, but those abbreviations often make their way into documentation intended for patients.
Once again, this may be something the average patient could handle on their own as some of those abbreviations make sense in English, but someone who doesn’t speak the language will often be quite confused when reading a statement like this.
That’s another area in which a qualified medical translation service can help you significantly. A good translator will understand the implications of using these abbreviations or expanding them in certain cases, and they will guide you through the entire process with a helping hand.
You may even figure out viable methods to improve your own communication after working with a translation agency for some time. For example, you may realize that you’ve been overusing certain abbreviations and terms in places where simpler language could make more sense.
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Constantly Evolving Technology
The healthcare field is constantly evolving, and new developments appear on the horizon almost every day. Keeping up with these developments is already challenging enough for a physician, especially in certain specializations. And when it comes to communicating with your patients about something that’s only appeared recently, you can quickly run into some problems.
A competent medical translation agency will always make sure to stay on top of its game when it comes to following these developments. You’ll never have to wonder if the agency’s translators are familiar with certain new technology that you’re planning to use in your treatments. At most, you might just have to point them in the right direction if it’s something particularly fresh.
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Patient Privacy
Part of being a good physician is understanding the implications of patient privacy and handling relevant situations with the attention they deserve. And while you and your colleagues may be well aware of those implications, the same can’t be said about the average translation agency out there.
It takes a lot of training and practice to become familiar with HIPAA and other similar frameworks, especially when you’re dealing with multiple patients from different backgrounds all the time. When you’re working with a reputed medical translation agency like The Language Doctors, you can rest assured that every translator you’re working with has taken extensive training on the topics of privacy and confidentiality.
There are some liability issues to consider in this regard, so this is something you can’t afford to ignore in any case. One small violation can often spell disaster for your practice, and things can easily spiral downwards from there. That’s why it’s important to ensure that you’re working with someone qualified from the very start.
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Wide Diversity of Patient Backgrounds
You may also face issues when dealing with patients from different backgrounds, especially when there are cultural differences on the table. Without the help of an experienced medical translator, making a mistake that leads to a massive misunderstanding is easier than you might think. And once your patients have lost your trust, there’s little you can do to regain it.
That’s another challenge constantly faced by medical translators, and something that experienced agencies place a lot of emphasis on. It can take a lot of effort to ensure that a message is translated in a sensitive and reasonable way without losing any of its original meaning. But when you’re working with a good medical translator, that effort is not on you.
Don’t underestimate the importance of this aspect of working with a specialized medical translator. Much like privacy violations, it sometimes only takes one issue for things to get really bad. You’re probably already considering every statement you make to your patients in extensive detail before you speak. You shouldn’t have to burden yourself with additionally trying to figure out if there are any ways in which the message could be interpreted.
Conclusion
Ready to take on the challenges of medical translation with the help of a professional agency that understands the field in detail? Look no further! At The Language Doctors, we offer qualified medical translation services at competitive rates. We pay attention to every small detail in our interactions with our clients, and we take special care to ensure that nothing gets left out of the picture once your words have passed through our translators.
We also offer numerous other benefits that set us apart from the competition, like our 24/7 availability and our extensive range of translators from a variety of backgrounds. It doesn’t matter if you need to focus explicitly on medical translations or if you need additional support from specialists with a background in technology, legal, or any other field. We’re there for you, and we’re ready to take on your project!
