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Abstract

Health equity and accessing Spanish kidney transplant information continues being a substantial challenge facing the Hispanic community. This study evaluated ChatGPT’s capabilities in translating 54 English kidney transplant frequently asked questions (FAQs) into Spanish using two versions of the AI model, GPT-3.5 and GPT-4.0. 

Introduction

The concept of health equity involves providing every individual with a fair and just opportunity to attain their highest level of health¹. Unfortunately, disparities in healthcare access and the distribution of medical information continue to be significant barriers². For the Hispanic community, particularly those who primarily speak Spanish, these barriers are often compounded by linguistic challenges, limiting their access to essential healthcare information.

Source: https://www.nature.com/srep

Full article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-59237-7?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=commission_junction&utm_campaign=CONR_PF018_ECOM_GL_PHSS_ALWYS_DEEPLINK&utm_content=textlink&utm_term=PID5835937&CJEVENT=e4c837a2f8b911ee822c00780a82b832

NHS interpreting service problems contributed to patient deaths

The BBC has found interpreting issues were a contributing factor in at least 80 babies dying or suffering serious brain injuries in England between 2018 and 2022.

See the BBC news link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-66605536.amp

People with poor reading skills are likely to be less healthy than those who read easily, according to recent research. Literacy skills are important for keeping in good shape.

“Some people don’t seem to obtain necessary health information because they’re not good readers,” says associate professor Kjersti Lundetræ at the University of Stavanger’s Reading Centre.

Together with fellow associate professor Egil Gabrielsen at the Reading Centre and general practitioner Reidar Stokke, she has written an article on this subject entitled Health in Every Word.

This concludes that a relationship exists between self-perceived health and literacy, and draws on data from the international adult literacy and life skills survey (ALL). More.

See: The University of Stavanger

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Call it a case of “lost in translation.” Washington and Oregon’s new health insurance exchanges are getting poor marks for their efforts to communicate with foreign language audiences.

On the Washington Health Benefit Exchange website you can find fact sheets in eight foreign languages – from Cambodian to Somali. These one and two page documents are supposed to help uninsured families navigate the new world of the Affordable Care Act.

But after the translations went live on the website, the feedback was not great.

“We looked at those and felt that they were somewhat concerning in their quality and effectiveness,” says Amy Alexander, a member of an advisory committee that’s helping Washington’s Exchange reach out to low income and immigrant communities.

She says the committee had unofficial reviewers look at the translations.

Imagine a teacher taking a red pen to a student’s paper. That’s what it looked like when the reviewers got done. In the case of the Cambodian translation, the reviewer said it was written in street language and recommended a complete redo. The Chinese language reviewer said just the opposite: that the language was too formal and difficult to understand.

Alexander says it’s vital to get it right. “It is often said that it’s better to have no translation than a poor translation.” More.

See: OPB

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Improving the health of aboriginal children requires teaching them about their traditional languages and culture, says anthropologist Dawn Martin-Hill.

Martin-Hill was speaking to an indigenous children’s health symposium put on by university medical students Saturday at McMaster Innovation Park. Its purpose was to examine why the quality of health of aboriginal children is so much worse than other young Canadians — and to consider solutions.

Ongoing and systemic racism within the medical profession was a major reason raised. So too was a deep distrust of doctors by aboriginals, something passed down through generations that stems from trauma at their hands in residential schools, or in practices such as sterilizing native women, Martin-Hill said. More.

See: TheSpec.com

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If you are running a home-based business, one of the most important factors in your success actually starts in the way your office is set up. Because you are working from the comforts of your own home, it can be very easy to forget about things like health and safety. It’s time to change that.

Below is a list of areas in your home office to look at with your health and safety in mind. The benefits of creating a healthier and safer home work environment are pretty self explanatory, and in most cases, any required changes won’t cost you much. But you may be very surprised how much more efficient, productive, and happier you’ll be with them there.

I know this from experience. I have a home office; I spend a significant amount of time there and have made a lot of the changes mentioned below, such as cleaning up the electrical wiring, moving my desk, bringing in some plants, and organizing all the clutter that constantly threatens to take over my desk. It made a world of difference… More >>

This is the first in a series of guest blog posts on the T.O. by member Konstantin Kisin. Konstantin has some valuable tips on communication, negotiation with clients, productivity, and striking a balance between life and work (be sure to check out the interview with him in last week’s podcast as well).

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“Work/Life Balance as a Freelancer”, by Konstantin Kisin

During the London workshop on Negotiation Skills, I asked the attendees to raise their hand if they felt they were “too busy” and more than 50% did. I then asked the group to answer the question of “How busy do you want to be?” and most people looked at me with a mixture of bemusement and disbelief!

You see, a lot of us think that the answer to this question is obvious: we “should” be as busy as possible. This belief is so ingrained that even when we notice the impact of being “too busy” on our lives (poor health, relationship problems, stress, mental and emotional suffering), we “get on with it,” “get through it,” “tough it out,” “try to stay on top of things” and so on.

As language industry professionals, we spend a lot of time with words and it can sometimes be useful to look at them very literally. Take the word “freelancer” as an example – whatever it means, one of the things it tells us is that a freelancer is someone who is free… or is she? Many of us become freelancers to enjoy the flexibility being your own boss can offer, and yet “having freedom” and “being free” are very different things. If you have the freedom to work your own hours but end up working 12 hours a day with little or no time off, you may not be as free as you think.

If there is one thing I know to be true, it is that the success of your business and your quality of life depend on the questions you ask yourself. Only if you can answer questions like “How much do I want to work?,” “What level of income do I want to have?” and “How do I need to change what I am doing to achieve this?” can you understand what you want and how to get there.

Many people who attend my webinars, presentations and workshops comment that the ideas we discuss apply to all areas of their lives, not just their business. This always delights me because I don’t believe you can separate the two, especially as a freelancer. Whether you are happy or unhappy, healthy or unhealthy, excited or bored, energized or tired, pleased or frustrated will affect how you treat your clients, how many mistakes you make, how you handle difficulties and misunderstandings, how motivated you are and all this determines how successful you are in your business.

In the next few blog entries and podcast interviews, I will share ideas and suggestions for achieving more of the balance you want in a way that creates more happiness, health, excitement, energy and freedom.

For now, I invite you to ask yourself these important questions and listen carefully to the answers.

See: Translator T.O.

In 20 years as a nurse practitioner, Ann Cho found herself preventing a false child-abuse claim — because a bruise on a baby was a “Mongolian spot” common to Asian babies — and explaining to health care workers why a new mother wouldn’t take a shower — because of a Korean belief that teeth and bones are weak after childbirth.

Routinely, she would inform doctors and fellow health care workers at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, where she now works, and at other area hospitals about customs and beliefs unique to Koreans.

“Anybody that needed help with a language problem or clinical problem, I would do the troubleshooting,” Cho said. “Any Korean patient that would come in for surgery, I would explain the procedures, the pre-op, post-op … alleviate the fear.”

It wasn’t her job then, but now it officially is. Last month, Cho became the first of four cultural concierges Lutheran General plans to hire as part of an initiative to forge a better link between the hospital and the large Korean, Polish, Russian and Hispanic populations in the north and northwest suburbs.

Hospitals across the region are seeing more people with different languages, cultural sensitivities and religions that can confound doctors, nurses and caregivers and hinder patients’ best possible care. Interpreters have been deployed by many hospitals, but more expansive measures now are being considered inside the hospital and to communities with large ethnic populations.

Cho, while continuing as a nurse practitioner and an advocate for Korean patients, will educate hospital staff on cultural sensitivities and reach out to members of the Korean community who may be wary of American hospitals. Read more.

See: Chicago Tribune

Looking at Alzheimer’s patients, Canadian neuroscientist Ellen Bialystok finds that people who speak two languages cope significantly better with the disease

Ellen Bialystok is a cognitive neuroscientist whose research has shown that speaking two or more languages on a regular basis from a young age can have a positive effect on the brain. Not only does it enhance cognitive abilities, being bilingual can also delay symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Bialystok, 62, is a distinguished research professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, Canada. Last year, she was awarded a $100,000 Killam prize for her contributions to the social sciences.

What was the first indication in your research that bilingualism had neurological benefits?

It came from children’s ability to understand the structure of language as well as the meaning. This is called metalinguistic knowledge, and it’s the key to using language for learning, for literacy, for thinking, for logic. To assess how far along they are in metalinguistic development, we would ask children between the ages of five and nine to judge whether or not a sentence is grammatically correct, however nonsensical it may be. The example I use is: “Apples grow on noses.” It’s very hard for kids to say that’s OK grammatically: they want to tell you that apples don’t grow on noses. We found that bilingual children were better able to do this.

Why?

It relates to the essential problem of bilingualism. When a bilingual person is speaking in one language, research shows that the other language is active in his or her mind. That creates a problem: how do you select from the language you need without this other active language getting in the way? In my view, you incorporate a cognitive system called the executive control system, whose job it is to resolve competition and focus attention. If you’re bilingual, you are using this system all the time, and that enhances and fortifies it. And that’s why bilingual children can say that “Apples grow on noses” is said the right way: they are accustomed to resolving the conflict between form and meaning. Read more.

See: Guardian.co.uk

Freelancing comes prepackaged with a lot of concerns (mostly over the next pay check). These concerns can have a negative effect on us. It’s all too easy to fall into a path of neglect and poor health habits. For our careers to flourish we need to stay healthy, and not go down the dark road so many freelancers follow of ignoring their health.

Whether it’s that 24 hour session you pull off to finish client work on time, or the high blood pressure you gain from explaining to someone on Skype that you don’t do spec work, we are all affected (to some extent) by the rigors of our profession. As with most things in life, it’s better to tackle the issue head on, rather than await the inevitable burnout that is sure to follow.

Of the many work related health issues freelancers tend to abuse (to the point of making themselves look 30 years old and feel like 180 years old instead), the same five issues tend to be most prevalent. The really ironic thing about each of these conditions is that unlike many health related illnesses, there’s generally no need for pills or some kind of medical specialist to intervene (that is unless you leave the problem for too long), it only requires some sensible planning and perhaps an hour or more a day to sustain.

Factors which can impact your health:

• Sleep – Get enough of it. Being an insomniac will just lead you to being cranky with clients and you’ll feel tired all of the time. That’s not to say you should be in bed at 9PM every night, night owls (like me) are fine working backward hours, just as long as you get your required 8 hours somewhere!
• Exercise – The geeks worst nightmare… surrounded by humanoids and nature (comprised of wild green stuff that makes us sneeze and wheeze). You don’t have to be outside to keep fit; you could join a gym, do Yoga, martial arts (becoming a full time ninja), or just exercise in your home.
• Diet – There’s an increasing importance of stopping ourselves from ending up like the “stay puffed marshmallow man” from Ghostbusters. Eating healthy doesn’t mean we can’t indulge from time to time, but keep watch over the fat, salt, calories, and sugar (etc), and watch both the waistline and weight.
• Stress – Something we all suffer in increasing amounts, it’s important for us to keep it under control. Try to find some ways to relax, it’s critical for our health and to avoid us either going bald before we’re 30, or burying that annoying client in the yard at 3AM (don’t say you’ve not thought about it)!
• Social – Freelancers can lose touch with humanity quite quickly, and some find it hard to talk to non-clients socially (feeling loneliness as a result). Try and mix with people, go on dates, socialize, join clubs, visit conferences… just don’t end up like Jack Nicholson in The Shining (it won’t end well)! Read more.

See: Freelance switch