We acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which this podcast has been produced, and we pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and to elders past and present. Welcome to SNAC, the Aged Care podcast where we break down some of the big questions around what it really means to be person centered. This podcast is brought to you by the Ethnic Communities Council of Queensland, also known as ECCQ, the peak body for multicultural communities in Queensland. This episode focuses on the importance of engaging professional interpreter services in aged and health care. We will hear from Jenny Hazelwood from ECCQ’s Partners in Culturally Appropriate Care Program, also known as PCAC, and Diana Padija, team leader of Language Services, Metro North Health in Brisbane. We will discover the difference between interpreters and translators and hear why using interpreters is important to a successful outcome for culturally diverse people receiving care services. Diana and her team support interpreter services for the hospitals in the Metro North area, including Kalanga and Caboolture. Let’s now hear from Jenny and Diana. So, tell me, how many interpreters does your team look after or coordinate? We are quite a busy team. We organise on average 2,500 interpreter services each month. And how many languages would that be? It could be anywhere from 80 up to a 130 languages. A month? A month. Wow. That is incredible. So, what are the top languages in that area? Our top languages are are Arabic, number 1st, and then Mandarin, so Chinese speaking from mainland China. Yep. And Taiwan. And Taiwan. Thank you. Yes. And then in 3rd place is Cantonese, so that’s people that originate from Hong Kong. Great. In 4th place is Auslan, that’s short for Australian sign language. And number 5 is Spanish, my own.
We hear a lot about translators, but then you know we’re talking about interpreters today. So what is the difference between an interpreter and a translator? Mainly interpreters deal with speech and translators deal with written. So you would engage an interpreter when you are speaking in a language other than English or if you signed. Yeah. But if you need to translate a document, then you you would engage a translator. Yeah. There are many benefits of engaging an interpreter. Interpreters are actually language specialists. They go through a lot of training and education. They have to sit and exam to, you know, formally be assessed Yep. In their language skills, but also there’s an ethical component and there’s a cultural component. And they must divide by the code of ethics, which means that they need to be impartial, so they need to keep their opinions to themselves. Right. They have to remain neutral. They have to maintain confidentiality at all times, and they strive to be as accurate as possible. There’s certain topics in particular when it’s very important to engage a professional interpreter. Yes. Things like when you’re discussing complex topics, dementia, end of life, palliative care, and advanced health directive, not to mention the voluntary assisted dying. So it is extremely important to make sure that you engage a certified or qualified interpreter. That’s a lot of training that an interpreter actually goes through. Why don’t we actually use, family members and friends that are far more convenient than engaging an interpreter? They are convenient and we love to bring our family and friends for emotional support. It’s is a very important part to make sure we bring someone that cares about us, but they really shouldn’t be taking on the role of an interpreter. They’re not trained or they’re not equipped to handle medical terminology, for example.
Yes. So they may not be able to properly interpret a medical term or be able to understand a medical complex diagnosis. Yeah. So this is where engaging a professional interpreter is important. Also, family sometimes can’t, omit certain things. Yeah. So depending on the context of what’s being what’s being talked about, you know, they might ask questions that are a little bit embarrassing or they may not feel comfortable talking about that so they just leave it out. Yes. And that can have devastating consequences. Or they might change the the meaning of certain words which again might lead to undesirable outcomes. I’m sure you’ve got a few stories that you have experienced where they’ve accessed a family member and it’s gone wrong. Can do you wanna share a couple of stories? Yes. I have one that comes to mind. For example, sometimes patients don’t want to disclose intimacy issues. Yes. I did hear about an elderly patient in their eighties admit that they were still sexually active in front of a family member. Obviously, this was quite embarrassing for the relative to be hearing this. Yeah. And it it does happen a lot, when, you know, you bring family or friends along with you and you end up listening to what really goes on and and it is embarrassing. Yeah. I know another story of where they got the grandchild to interpret for a grandmother and they were talking about continence AIDS and the poor child was really confused because they didn’t understand this condition and obviously poor grandma was very embarrassed as well. So again, another reason why we we need to engage interpreters in these types of consultations. Some people may think that using bilingual staff within their organisation might be a more convenient option I am not a qualified interpreter.
I I do speak Spanish. Spanish is my first language, but I am not a qualified interpreter. I cannot perform that role. I am not certified to act. That is a profession just like being a doctor or a nurse. Yeah. And so I am not qualified to do that role. We do have a very diverse workforce in Metro North Health Mhmm. And we’re very proud of that and we encourage and want to acknowledge the diversity we have. Yeah. But there is a distinction between having a diverse workforce and being culturally welcoming to patients or consumers that come to use our services. So this might be a new term for a lot of people, but it’s so important, in aged care. What is language reversion? So language reversion is quite common, in bilingual people, multilingual people. They tend to revert back to their mother tongue when they are particularly unwell or going through any stressful event. But this actually is quite common in elderly people, People who suffer from dementia or other cognitive problems, it is quite common, to see that they revert back to the first language. So it’s important for aged care workers or mental health practitioners to be aware of this phenomenon because it is, it is quite common. We mainly engage 3 types of interpreters. Face to face, we call it our gold standard. Your gold standard? Our gold standard because there’s a lot of advantages to having a an interpreter face to face in the room with you. You get so much, more than just listening to the words, but you can actually see their body language, which can tell a lot. You can only do that when you’re sitting in the in the room with the interpreter. And that’s a really important point when talking about different languages because nonverbal communication is very important in some cultures.
Yes, extremely important. So, we strive to get a face to face interpreter as much as possible, but unfortunately, that is not always turns out that way. So what backup do you have if you don’t have a face to face interpreter? Yes. So we use telephone interpreters a lot. It’s actually a great way to engage really fast. We can connect you to with an interpreter within minutes. And with aged care, it’s, TIS. They need a code, but yes. The translating and interpreting service, also known as TIS, is a national interpreting service provided by the Department of Home Affairs. This service is for people with limited English language proficiency and for organizations that need to communicate with their non English speaking clients. It operates 24 hours every day of the year. It is a free service for clients and for some eligible organizations, including aged care organizations. They will need a client code from TISS when booking an interpreter service. The telephone number for TISS is 131450. If you are a care worker who has clients who would benefit from the interpreter services mentioned, please speak to your coordinator who can facilitate the booking of interpreters. For non aged care providers who may not be eligible for TISS, have a discussion with your organization about the interpreter providers they work with and the process for booking. For Metro North Health staff and consumers, they need to contact Metro North Language Services on 3 6472000. Further details can be found in the show notes. And we also engage video remote interpreters. Oh, wow. So this is a great way to access interpreters at a national level. Obviously, with face to face interpreters, we are limited by the pool of local interpreters Yeah. Around the Brisbane area. So, when engaging a video interpreter, we go our access increases by 5 times because we do have access to the national pool.
Do Do you have any particular languages that you find really beneficial on video? Absolutely. We do have Auslan or Australian sign language interpreters available via video. This is a great alternative for deaf patients because, obviously, you can’t call the deaf patient. So having, the ability to connect with a video interpreter for Auslan is fantastic. There is a well known shortage of Auslan interpreters nationally, so this has been a great alternative for deaf patients. Why is gender so important when you’re booking your interpreter? There are some obvious times when gender is important, like if you’ve got a gender sensitive appointment, you’ve got a breast screened Yeah. Or obstetrics review, things like that. Obviously, you want to make sure that you ask for a female interpreter. But gender is a cultural preference as well. It is important to be aware of gender dynamics. So, for example, some individuals may not fully engage from members of the opposite sex. From simple things like a woman will not shake a man’s hand when greeting. So little things like that, it’s important to be aware of that. So, again, just ask your consumer if they prefer a a male or a female because it does have a Make a difference. Yeah. Going a little bit outside the gender, but sometimes there are some pretty small communities and, if they’re concerned about what is going to be discussed in an appointment, they might prefer to engage an interstate interpreter in those cases because they want to make sure that nobody knows them and their information is not going to be shared in their communities. The National Accreditation Authority For Translators and Interpreters Limited, also known as NAATI, is the national standards and certifying body for translators and interpreters in Australia. It is a professional qualification for people who wish to work as translators and interpreters.
If you’ve got a really complex consultation or, you know, appointment and you need to engage an interpreter, there are different levels within NAATI accreditations. So, for example, if it is health or legal, then we wanna try and get the highest level accreditation for that appointment. But again, with the shortage of interpreters, what’s the tip to take away to get the best interpreter in those types of situations? So you really wanna make sure that for certain appointments, you get the basic standard. So a certified level interpreter is what you will require for things like mental health appointments, anything that requires signing, legally binding documents, anything that I talk about the four c’s. So anything that you need to sign consent for or if the person is going through a crisis or if you’re gonna talk about complexity complex issues, multidisciplinary teams involve lots of people giving their input as well as competence, assessing competence. So in those scenarios, we really wanna engage a certified interpreter, which is professionally. Failing that, the next level down would be a certified provisional interpreter. So for those specific situations, you really want to make sure you engage either a certified or a certified provisional. So it’s going back to the human rights of the individual. For approved providers, you can access a certified interpreter. There is a bit of a process that you can contact pcaac@eccq.com.au to find out more details, but there is no cost for approved aged care providers, which is something that we need to get out to many people. A lot of people don’t realize they think they have to actually pay. PCAC or Partners in Culturally Appropriate Care is a national initiative funded by the Australian government. In Queensland, PCAC is hosted and delivered by ECCQ.
PEACAC Queensland supports aged care providers to deliver culturally appropriate care and assist older multicultural people and their families to make informed decisions about their aged care. Tips and hints, for booking an interpreter. What do we need to know? What do aged care services and health staff need to know about booking an interpreter? Look, if in doubt, always book an interpreter. If you see that the consumer is bringing a friend or a family and they’re doing most of the talking Yeah. You need to engage an interpreter. Great tips. Great tips. I just remembered one other tip for phone interpreters because that’s a great way of communicating with consumers at home because you can actually engage a telephone interpreter and have a three way conversation. Yeah. Yeah. So if if you don’t have the consumer with you, but you need to make contact with them, again, you contact your language services team, and then you give them the information to contact the consumer, and they can do a three way connection with the interpreter so you’ve got 2 or more parties in the same call. Yeah. And for aged care staff, all they need to do is ring the TIS phone number and they can link them up with an interpreter of their choice and then give them the phone number of the patient or the consumer and then, they can have that three way conversation. Lots of tips. Use first person always. So when you’re talking to your consumer, you don’t talk to the interpreter and say, interpreter, can you ask her or him? So you always direct the conversation to your consumer directly. And also the seating configuration would be important to make sure that you’re talking first person so you wouldn’t be facing your interpreter you’d be in facing facing your consumer.
So this the interpreter should really sit on the side. You should be facing directly to the consumer. Try to use short sentences and, again, plain English as much as possible. So avoid things like lots of jargon or lots of abbreviations or complex terminology. Make sure you allocate enough time. Often, people don’t realize that things have to be said twice when you speak to an interpreter. It can take twice as long. So always make sure you allocate sufficient time. If you normally have an hour consultation, double it. And it’s also really important, especially for complex consultations, to have a briefing with the interpreter and allocate that in the booking time. What is a briefing, before the actual consultation? It’s important to give them a background or a context of what your purpose for the meeting is going to be just to give them a chance to to really prepare because most of the time, they have no information. And another really critical tip I remember when I worked with interpreters was to note the booking number down. Why is that so important? It’s particularly important when you are connected to a telephone interpreter because we have thousands of bookings. Yes. It really helps speed up the connection to the interpreter that we have prebooked for you. Also, if there’s any problems on the day Yep. And then you can reconnect a lot quicker to that particular interpreter. In this episode, we heard the difference between translators and interpreters, benefits of engaging professional interpreters in health and aged care settings, and why we should not use family members for interpreting, especially in complex cases as it could cause embarrassment to the client and information could be mis communicated. We also heard about strategies for a successful interpreting session.
Have the interpreter face and communicate directly with the consumer. Avoid jargon, abbreviations, or complex terminology, allocate enough time, and pre brief the interpreter. If you want to learn more about engaging professional interpreters, you can find a number of resources in the show notes, including those mentioned in this episode. Join us for the next episode of snack to hear more about caring for culturally and linguistically diverse people. Funding for this podcast has been provided by the Council on the Aging Queensland Home Care Workforce Support Consortium as part of the Home Care Support Programme, which was funded through grant funding from the Australian Government.
