LANGUAGE BARRIER AS AN OBSTACLE TO GET ACCESS TO MEDICAL CARE

Doctor – patient communication is a common thing if both of them represent a common culture and speak the same language. The difficulties arise when the participants of the dialogue are from different cultures and do not speak the same language. This situation is not uncommon in multicultural and multilingual countries.

Health care in many western countries is faced with the fact that the non-native population has diverse languages and ethnic characteristics. The diversity of the local population and immigrants affect the major aspects of treatment, such as the patient's record at admission, description of symptoms, description of the disease, the presentation of personal data, marital status, and discussion of diagnosis or compliance with treatment. This problem is obvious through personal contacts.

The challenge that humanity faces is the necessity to build bridges of intelligibility among the languages and to respect cultural identities. In today’s world (especially in Europe) health and administrative services need interpreters more urgently than ever before.

The authors mention three main barriers to overcome: language, cultural, emotional. Working as researchers and interpreters, the authors have developed certain understanding of the problem. The work can be useful for both the beginners and experienced interpreters.