Replies to LegCo questions
LCQ21: Interpretation services of Hospital Authority
Following is a question by the Hon Chan Han-pan and a written reply by the
Secretary for Food and Health, Dr Ko Wing-man, in the Legislative Council today
(October 15):
Question:
Quite a number of people from the ethnic minorities have relayed to me that when
seeking treatments at public hospitals or clinics, they are often not given
appropriate treatments as they encounter communication difficulties due to
language barriers. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council
if it knows:
(1) whether the Hospital Authority (HA) has reviewed the interpretation services
currently provided for people from the ethnic minorities;
(2) the number of complaints received by HA in the past three years lodged by
people from the ethnic minorities about not being given appropriate treatments
due to language barriers, and whether HA has followed up and dealt with such
complaints; if HA has, of the details; if not, the reasons for that; and
(3) whether HA will allocate additional resources to employ more people from the
ethnic minorities to work in public hospitals or clinics, so that they may also
perform interpretation work as needed; if HA will, of the details; if not, the
reasons for that?
Reply:
President,
To cater for the needs of ethnic minorities, interpretation services are
provided in public hospitals and clinics of the Hospital Authority (HA) through
a service contractor, part-time court interpreters, volunteers and consulate
offices. The interpretation services provided by the service contractor, Hong
Kong Translingual Services, cover 18 ethnic minority languages (namely Urdu,
Hindi, Punjabi, Nepali, Bahasa Indonesia, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Bengali,
Japanese, Tagalog, German, French, Sinhala, Spanish, Arabic, Malay and
Portuguese).
The HA has formulated guidelines for its staff on the procedures of arranging
interpretation services. HA staff will arrange on-site or telephone
interpretation services according to the needs of each case or upon requests of
patients. For scheduled service (such as medical appointment at general
outpatient and specialist clinics), patients may request the hospital/clinic
concerned to arrange interpretation services in advance. For non-scheduled
service (such as hospital admission during emergency), hospital staff will
arrange immediate provision of telephone interpretation service or on-site
interpretation service as soon as possible, or use response cue cards in ethnic
minority languages to communicate with patients, in order to ensure that medical
treatment could be provided in a timely manner.
Besides interpretation services, the HA also provides response cue cards,
disease information sheets and patient consent forms in 18 ethnic minority
languages to enhance communication between hospital staff and ethnic minority
patients in order to facilitate their registration and provision of services.
These documents contain information about common diseases (e.g. headache, chest
pain and fever), treatment procedures (e.g. blood transfusion and radiation
therapy safety issues) and details of HA's services (e.g. fees and charges and
the triage system of the Accident and Emergency Department).
My reply to the various parts of the question is as follows:
(1) The HA has regularly reviewed the interpretation services provided to ethnic
minorities, and will expand the service coverage according to needs. The number
of languages covered by the interpretation services has increased from four in
2006 to 18 now. To ensure the quality of interpretation services, the HA
provides, through its service contractor, training in medical-related knowledge
and communication skills for all interpreters, including training sessions
conducted by university lecturers. Through such training, interpreters will
master communication skills, and knowledge on hospital operation, medical
terminology and infection control, so that they can provide services for ethnic
minority patients in a prompt and accurate manner. So far, over 80 interpreters
have received such training. In collaboration with representatives of the Centre
for Translation of the Hong Kong Baptist University, the service contractor
commissioned by the HA also conducts annual inspection in hospitals to monitor
the service quality of interpreters.
(2) According to HA's complaint records and annual survey findings of patients
using the services of Hong Kong TransLingual Services, users were generally very
satisfied with the interpretation services provided in hospitals and clinics.
In the 2011-12 and 2012-13 financial years, the HA received 20 and 12 complaints
involving interpretation services provided in its public hospitals and clinics,
representing less than 0.6% and 0.3% of the total number of cases respectively.
The complaints mainly concern interpreters who were unable to arrive on time,
and the situation has been improved in this regard. In the 2013-14 financial
year, only 3 complaints were received, representing less than 0.05% out of a
total of approximately 6,000 sessions of interpretation services provided in
public hospitals and clinics under the HA. The complaints were mainly about the
communication skills of interpreters and none of them was about the punctuality
of interpreters. The HA and the service contractor have proactively taken
follow-up actions in this regard.
(3) To meet the growing demand for interpretation services, the HA's expenditure
on interpretation services increased from about $1.4 million in 2011-12 to about
$3 million in 2013-14. It is expected that the expenditure will continue to
increase in 2014-15.
The HA will continue to strengthen the promotion of interpretation services to
ethnic minorities. Multilingual posters have been printed and posted in public
hospitals, and TV panels are used for promoting and helping ethnic minorities
understand how to use the interpretation services.
Apart from healthcare personnel, front-line staff such as staff at enquiry
counters, nurses and clerks in hospital and clinics also come in contact with
ethnic minorities. The HA orgainses various seminars on the cultural
characteristics of ethnic minorities, anti-discrimination legislation and equal
opportunities for its staff. Online training is also provided to strengthen
their communication skills with ethnic minorities, enhance their knowledge on
ethnic minority cultures and improve their skills in arranging interpretation
services. The relevant information has also been incorporated in the induction
course for new recruits. From April 2011 to March 2014, over 5,000 HA staff of
various levels received relevant training in serving ethnic minorities.
Looking ahead, the HA will continue to pay close attention to users' views and
comments on the interpretation services in order to uphold service quality.
Ends/Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Issued at HKT 16:45
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