Southampton Surgery Champions SignTranslate
2008-01-31
With Gordon Brown stressing recently in the news that the NHS must embrace reforms to meet the challenges of twenty-first century lives, St Mary's surgery in Southampton is doing just that. Dr Kevin Reynolds and his staff are using a revolutionary web-based program called SignTranslate to help them communicate with Deaf patients and those who have limited English. "We've been using the program for about 7 months, predominately the foreign language translation facility," explains Dr Reynolds, "as about a third of our patients use English as a second language. We have also started using the program with our Deaf patients who use British Sign Language (BSL), and it's been very well received." Val Payne, from St Mary's surgery, has been the driving force behind Southampton City's take up of SignTranslate, and says "We feel this is a major step forward in assisting deaf people and an invaluable tool in communicating very important medical issues." Word is getting around and other surgeries in Southampton such as Aldermoor and Chessel are now offering their patients the option to use SignTranslate with them. Hampshire Deaf Association supports the surgeries' use of SignTranslate and will be featuring it in their next newsletter. SignHealth, the national healthcare charity for Deaf people, launched the SignTranslate program in 2006 with the endorsement of the Department of Health. The program enables healthcare professionals to communicate with patients who have limited English at the "click of a mouse". As well as video clips of British Sign Language (BSL), SignTranslate also translates into 12 foreign languages, from Arabic to Urdu. With deaf patients, if the consultation needs a more in-depth discussion, patient and doctor can choose to have a live video call, through the SignTranslate program, with an on-line fully qualified sign language interpreter, just using a simple webcam. SignTranslate is not a replacement for a face-to-face interpreter, but for certain types of consultation, it can give patients the option to have an appointment with their GP quickly rather than having to rely on a third party such as a friend or family member, or waiting for an interpreter to be available.