SignHealth

The Deaf health charity

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Deaf mystery shoppers highlight health inequalities

Deaf people are dying early because communication difficulties prevent them from having the same access to healthcare as hearing people. That’s what SignHealth’s Director of Communications Paul Welsh told BBC Radio Berkshire.

SignHealth was responding to “Are you hearing us? The experience of deaf patients in Wokingham Borough accessing GP services”. The report was produced by Deaf Positives Action, which ‘mystery shopped’ 13 surgeries in the area, on behalf of HealthWatch Wokingham

They discovered that surgeries often do not provide patients with an interpreter. And where an interpreter service is available, patients often have to wait weeks for an appointment, putting their health at risk.

Deaf Positive Action

Deaf Positives Action’s findings reflected those of SignHealth’s ‘Sick of It’ report into deaf health. ‘Sick of It’ revealed that 70% of Deaf people who haven’t been to their GP recently wanted to but didn’t go, mainly because there was no interpreter.

Sick Of It logo“This situation is so unnecessary’, Paul Welsh told the BBC, “Deaf people are dying earlier than hearing people simply because health providers are not making the effort to give them equal access to health services.”

Paul told the BBC Berkshire’s Andrew Peach about SignHealth’s InterpreterNow service. The service provides instant, online interpreting between British Sign Language (BSL) users and English speakers via an ordinary phone, computer, tablet or smartphone. It doesn’t replace face to face interpreters, but it can help when there is no time to arrange an interpreter to be present in person, or when one doesn’t turn up.

 

Photograph: www.gocredit.com

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SignHealth Help Improve Deaf Awareness in Hospitals (BSL)

Carolyn and Jane both work in the NHS as consultant anaesthetists. During the launch of our Sick Of It report, Carolyn tweeted SignHealth about how she communicates with D/deaf patients.

As part of our Deaf Awareness Week campaign, we have contacted hearing medical professionals and NHS staff to talk to them about communication barriers D/deaf people experience. We then asked them to think about the service they provide for D/deaf people. Most of the hearing professionals thought they offered a good service, but after reading our report they realised they were not meeting D/deaf people’s needs. A few of the NHS staff we spoke to have made video clips explaining how the Sick Of It report has improved their awareness, Carolyn and Jane being the first.

 Voice and Subtitles

 BSL

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Deaf Awareness Week 2014: Find out what we are doing…. (BSL)

Can you believe it, Deaf Awareness Week 2014 is here! A time for all D/deaf people and D/deaf organisations to come together and raise awareness.

SignHealth have one main aim this week – we want to breakdown communication barriers that D/deaf people experience.

And this is how we’re doing it…

Firstly, we have spent the last few weeks meeting hearing medical professionals and NHS staff. We have told them about our Deaf health report Sick Of It, and then asked them to think about the service they provide for D/deaf people. Most of these hearing professionals thought they offered a good service, but after reading our report, they realised they really weren’t meeting D/deaf people’s needs. A few of the NHS staff we spoke to have made video clips explaining how the Sick Of It report has improved their awareness, and we will be uploading these for you to see during Deaf Awareness Week.

Our second mini-project involved working with D/deaf people, or people who have Deaf children/parents. We asked them to talk about their experience of accessing health services so that hearing people could see first hand how their services are received. Sadly, most of the D/deaf people we spoke to only had bad experiences to share. They too have filmed themselves and we will be uploading their clips onto our website too.

Thirdly, and perhaps most crazily (!), two of our SignHealth staff have been travelling across the country talking to members of the public about their own D/deaf awareness. They showed them our Sick Of It report and asked each person to try imagining themselves in a Deaf person’s shoes. We wanted these people to understand what it feels like to struggle booking an appointment if they need to see their doctor, or how it feels to sit in a consultation in a medical setting without an interpreter. Often they will leave with a poor understanding of their illness and medication. A lot of people had never thought about this before, but when they stopped to think, they realised how difficult Deaf people’s experiences are.

Together with your help, we want to end the communication barriers that D/deaf people experience. If you are D/deaf and you go to the doctors and receive bad treatment, please be assertive and get your receptionist to book you an interpreter, note taker or lip-speaker, or ask for them to install InterpreterNow. Make sure you are given a double appointment to allow for your communication needs, and do not leave your appointment until you have a full understanding of your own health.

To follow that up, if you see something we post on Twitter or Facebook that you agree with, please retweet it or share it with your friends, and if you meet a hearing person who has little Deaf awareness, instead of getting angry and walking away, try to show them different ways of communicating, because it won’t just help you, it will help the whole D/deaf community.

 

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SignHealth Represented at DEAFvibe

99% of Friday’s conversations started with “What’s this?” and an inquisitive finger pointing at our giant yellow SICK OF IT logo. Stood at our SignHealth stand between Challenge North Staffs who support people suffering from Hate Crime, and opposite Sign Lingual, a Deaf awareness charity that provides BSL courses, was our signing team, explaining Sick Of It and the services we provide.

Our conversation went one of three ways.

Conversation one, in BSL or using English so people who wanted to could lipread, was with D/deaf people who hadn’t experienced good health care. Sadly, we’d heard it all before: Doctors who refused to book interpreters, GP receptionists who knew their surgery had a textphone but embarrassingly admitted it was kept upstairs (in a box, switched off), and audiology staff who repeatedly forgot to maintain face to face communication which made lip reading reading nigh on impossible. We even spoke to parents whose children had been asked to interpret in medical situations (which thankfully, the parents had refused).

Conversation two, generally started by a hearing person, was of a professional nature. We were over the moon to speak to Jane from the North Staffordshire Breast Screening Service, who wanted advice on how to make information sent to women about breast screening more accessible to native BSL users. We discussed making BSL clips and uploading them to the their website, our website and YouTube, and adding QR codes to each letter. This is something we are following up.
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[clear]We spoke to staff from the NHS Ambulance Service and showed them our service InterpreterNow, which would give paramedics instant access to an interpreter when a Deaf person faced life threatening injuries/illness and a face to face interpreter can’t be sourced immediately. We also had a long chat with signing police officers who have successfully campaigned for police-related information to be accessible in BSL when Deaf people enter police stations, although there’s still a long way to go before all police forces do this. We collected email addresses from everyone, and this week we will start working in collaboration with all of them.

However, conversation three was the most uplifting. Compared to our recent conversations with people at Deaf Day at City Lit, the Deaf people who spoke to us at DEAFvibe’s See Me, Hear Me event were thoroughly satisfied with their doctor’s capability (and understanding) of booking interpreters. For those who had friends and family members who did not receive such equality, they listened carefully and took our Prescriptions for Change to pass on.

We still have a long way to go, but finally it looks like those involved in the medical profession are starting to make change.

 

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New Counselling for Depressed Deaf Patients

What is ‘Breathing Space’? Counselling for Deaf people, from Deaf people, online.

Who can use the service? Scottish patients who suffer from low mood, mild depression and/or anxiety.

How much does it cost? Nothing. It’s free for all  Deaf patients.

How do you access it? Visit breathingspacescotland.co.uk.

Starting in May 2013, Deaf Scottish people suffering from mild depression and/or anxiety can access counselling in BSL.

The service, ‘Breathing Space’, allows Deaf people to receive support from a Deaf counsellor via web-cam technology.

It is operated by NHS 24 and uses SignHealth’s service InterpreterNow!.

All counsellors/advisers are fully qualified counsellors, nurses, psychologists or social workers and the service is COSCA (Counselling and Psychotherapy in Scotland) recognised.

Breathing Space is free and 100% confidential.

 

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Deaf Parents Experience Traumatic Birth Without Interpreter

Hospital: University College Hospital, London

Date: December 2013

Information source: The Guardian 

On December 7th, Nadia Hassan and her partner Hulusi Bati went to hospital because Nadia was experiencing stomach pains. She was in the late stages of pregnancy.

An interpreter was not available.

Hospital staff used Hulusi’s 12 year old daughter to relay information.

The next day, Nadia went into labour.

The hospital booked an interpreter but the interpreter finished work at 8pm.

Nadia went into labour at 9.30pm and there were complications. Forceps were used during the birth but no one could explain to her what was happening.

Nadia’s sister-in-law was asked to interpret but her sign language skills were basic.  She could not relay medical information.

After Nadia and Hulusi’s son was born, doctors took him away to give him injections. Nadia didn’t understand why.

The doctor gave a ‘thumbs up’ and that was all the explanation Nadia got.

Nadia didn’t have an interpreter when she met the midwife. She couldn’t fully understand information about breast-feeding instructions or when doctors visited for medical check-ups.

Hulusi complained that doctors and hospital staff had no Deaf awareness.

He said there should be ‘24-hour service for access to interpreters’ and Deaf people should be treated equally to hearing people.

SignHealth Think….

  • All medical professionals – doctors, dentists, paramedics, midwives, nurses, everyone – must be Deaf aware. SignHealth visits hospitals and surgeries to teach staff about Deaf awareness, communication and culture.
  • Deaf patients have the same rights as hearing patients. Deaf people must have equal access when receiving medical care.
  • Interpreters should be available for Deaf people 24/7. We understand that in an ideal world, this would be face to face, but sometimes, flexibility is needed. In such situations, SignHealth encourages Deaf people and healthcare services to use Sign Translate, an online BSL/English interpreting tool. Sign Translate is in the process of being rebranded as InterpreterNow which aims to offer Deaf people comprehensive 24/7 communication support.

Image Credit: Nikki Gomez