It's been almost a year since The Big Word started working with us providing interpreting and translation services for our patients. Alongside Topp Language Solutions (our interpreter for deaf patients), we've provided support for more than 4100 patients since last April.
Interestingly our top five language requests for face-to-face interpretions and telephone translations are slightly different (see below for the breakdown).
Around 1 in 10 people in the UK has hearing difficulties or is deaf. Topp Language Solution (TLS) only provide British Sign Language (BSL) interpretation. Their managing director has personal experience of the deaf community having deaf parents, so understands the challenges around offering BSL services for our patients.
Find out all you need to know about accessing these services on our intranet pages. Look under non-clinical information/interpreting services.
Top 5 requested face-to-face language translations (between April 17 and Jan 18):
- Punjabi
- Arabic
- Urdu
- Kurdish (Sorani)
- Polish
Top 5 requested telephone language translations:
- Arabic
- Kurdish (Sorani)
- Polish
- Czech
- Urdu
The CQC also fed back to us about interpreting services at our last inspection - you can see their comments in the Learning from CQC document under reference MD9. You'll find the full document here (look under Helpful Resources).