Mobile translators for non-English-speaking women accessing maternity services

Abstract

It is becoming increasingly common for midwives to care for women who do not speak English, and UK interpreting services are often inadequate and underused. Persistent language barriers have been found to contribute to maternal and perinatal mortality thus it is essential that these barriers are overcome to provide safe maternity care. This article reports on a two-stage study undertaken to address this. The study aimed to:

• Identify difficulties midwives experience when communicating with non-English-speaking women. Through undertaking a group interview with 11 senior students, four themes emerged: accessing interpreters, working with interpreters, cultural barriers and strategies to address persistent language barriers • Explore the feasibility of using mobile devices with a translation application to communicate in clinical practice. Google Translate was tested in a simulated clinical environment with multi-lingual service users. Google Translate was not adequately developed to be safely used in maternity services. However, a maternity-specific mobile application could be built to help midwives and women communicate in the presence of a persistent language barrier.