Exciting News for Interpreters in Dementia Care!

All Graduates
All Graduates | 7 Dec 2023

We are thrilled to share that The MINDSET Specialist Online Dementia Training for Interpreters is now live!

This free, online, self-paced course is a game-changer for interpreters working in the challenging and crucial field of dementia care.

All Graduates Interpreting & Translating is proud to be a Partner Organisation in the development of this training.

We would like to thank Bianca Brijnath, the National Ageing Research Institute team, and all the incredible Partner Organisations for their dedication and hard work in bringing this training to life.

Their commitment to enhancing the quality of care for individuals with dementia is truly commendable.

Special thanks to the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) for their generous grant, which made this initiative possible.

We encourage all interpreters working in dementia care to take advantage of this valuable resource. Let’s equip ourselves with the knowledge and skills needed to make a meaningful impact in the lives of those we serve.

Click here to access the course 

 

All Graduates
All Graduates | 24 Jun 2022

Ongoing collaboration between All Graduates Interpreting and Translating Service and Northern Health’s Virtual Emergency Department has resulted in successful health consultations for multicultural patients seeking emergency medical support.

Video interpreting has become increasingly popular as a service platform since the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic in March 2020, with many services being provided on a pre-booked basis. However, in late 2021, Northern Health sought an ‘on demand’ interpreting solution to cut wait times and provide interpreting needs on a reliable, real-time basis.

All Graduates has a large pool of trained video interpreters across a wide range of languages spoken within the Northern Health and surrounding catchment areas. As an early adopter of video interpreting technologies, All Graduates has spearheaded service delivery via video platforms for a decade, and offers an established and highly capable interpreting cohort to support client needs.

From December 2021, Northern Health and All Graduates articulated an On Demand Video Interpreting workflow and implemented a pilot arrangement to the end of February 2022, which achieved an effective fill rate of 98.5% of confirmed bookings, which exceeds common industry benchmarks.

The workflow includes the use of customised online bookings forms which are actioned immediately by All Graduates on receipt, with connection times being 10 minutes for Arabic interpreters and 20 minutes for all other languages, as agreed key performance indicators. All Graduates communicate responsively with Clinicians by telephone and email to provide booking confirmation status, and to connect the video call.

During the pilot, 66 video-interpreted services were delivered in the following languages:

 

Services were available across a broad span of hours ranging from 8:30am to 11:30pm Monday to Sunday.* During the trial, nearly 70% of services were requested between the hours of 2pm and 8pm, and over 95% of services went for more than 20 minutes (with 40% of these interactions lasting for between 50 and 120 minutes). Feedback on the service has consistently been positive, with doctors citing ease of use and rapid response times:

 

I have used it twice now and has worked well both times!
They were very quick (got one in under 5 mins) and the online form was easy to use.

 

In addition, these services are valued as they are able to be arranged at short notice, and a wider range of interpreting professionals can be sourced from metropolitan and regional locations around the country. Video interpreting technology has enormous potential to improve service access, delivery and flexibility, and reduce costs. Over time, the further rollout of this capability will make consultations between any health professional, patient and interpreter in any location around the country a real possibility.

As has been found in earlier initiatives in health settings1, in situations when onsite interpreting is not possible, culturally diverse patients prefer accessing interpreters via video conferencing rather than telephone, as they value the ability to see and interact with their interpreter rather than relying on voice communication only. Interpreters have also expressed their satisfaction with the user-friendly technology and ease of access to the video platform, with no additional software, effort or expertise required to connect to the video conference.

The trial is ongoing, and as the default service provider for meeting on-demand video requests, All Graduates looks forward to continued collaboration with Northern Health to support the healthcare needs of diverse clients.

Click here to view as a PDF

 


 

1Melbourne Health (Royal Melbourne Hospital) Telehealth Initiative: Schulz TR, Leder K, Akinci I and Biggs B-A (2015), Improvements in patient care: videoconferencing to improve access to interpreters during clinical consultations for refugee and immigrant patients, Australian Health Review 39(4), pp395-399, 23 March

*UPDATE: Following the success of the trial, the virtual ED service is now available 24 hours, 7 days a week.

 

All Graduates Interpreting & Translating is proud to announce our partnership in the Multilingual Older Persons COVID-19 Support Line.

All Graduates
All Graduates | 12 Feb 2021

The Australia-wide support line was launched on the 10th of February 2021 and will run until the 30th July 2021. The support line will increase access for older people from culturally diverse and linguistically backgrounds to information in their preferred language.

Callers will be able to speak with a phone support worker in Arabic, Cantonese, Greek, Italian, Mandarin or Vietnamese.

The Navigator System was built by the IT Department at All Graduates to manage and support the phone support workers to engage with callers in their own language.

 
Project Partners

The Multilingual Older Persons COVID-19 Support Line is led by the Centre for Cultural Diversity in Ageing (supported by Benetas) in partnership with Spectrum Migrant Resource Centre and All Graduates Interpreting and Translating Services and supported by the PICAC Alliance, OPAN, Dementia Australia, National Seniors Australia, National Ethnic and Multicultural Broadcasters’ Council and COTA Australia.

 

About the Support Line

The support line will provide callers from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds across Australia access to information areas about:

  • COVID-19 updates and restrictions that may affect them, their families or friends
  • Information on types of residential and home aged care services
  • Access to aged care and community services that are culturally aligned and speak their language.
  • Information on dementia support or caring for someone living with dementia

The support line will run for six months from 10 February 2021 until 31 July 2021 will be offered in the following six languages:

  • Arabic
  • Cantonese
  • Mandarin
  • Greek
  • Italian
  • Vietnamese

 

 How the Support Line Works

All calls are triaged by trained multilingual personnel and then directed to multilingual guidance from the COVID-19 Support Line for older Australians delivered by COTA Australia, OPAN, National Seniors Australia and Dementia Australia.

Older people, their families and carers who would like information and support are encouraged to contact the Multilingual Older Persons COVID-19 Support Line Monday to Friday between 2pm and 5pm Melbourne time (except public holidays) on:

  • 1800549844 – Italian
  • 1800549845 – Greek
  • 1800549846 – Vietnamese
  • 1800549847 – Mandarin
  • 1800549848 – Cantonese
  • 1800549849 – Arabic

 

 
More Information 

If you have questions about the phone line, please email:
multilingual@culturaldiversity.com.au

If you’d like to share/promote the phone line, please visit:
http://www.picacalliance.org/multilingual-older-persons-covid-19-support-line/

 

All Graduates
All Graduates | 8 Jul 2020

Healthdirect Video Call is a commonwealth government-funded video conferencing platform for health professionals and their patients. Telehealth is now part of everyday life, but learning how to navigate new technology can be difficult if English is not your first language.

To help clinicians support their patients, whose first language is not English or have limited English language proficiency, Healthdirect Video Call service has produced translated version of their ‘Attending your appointment via A Video Call’ flyer in 26 different languages. The flyer explains to patients how they can access their video appointments and how to get the best out of the experience. It can be customised to include the clinic’s information and includes a QR that allows patients to quickly access the waiting area prior to their appointment.

Being able to read the technical instructions in their own language helps alleviate a lot of the stress many patients feel when it comes to using telehealth.

Responding to the needs of the community, All Graduates have produced translated Telehealth instruction sheets working with NAATI-certified translators to make sure each one was correct and user-friendly.

 

The following languages are provided:

English to Albanian translation, Shqip 
English to Arabic translation, العربية
English to Bosnian translation, Bosanski
English to Burmese translation, မြန်မာစာ
English to Croatian translation, Hrvatski
English to Filipino translation, Tagalog
English to Greek translation, Eλληνικά
English to Hindi translation, हिन्दी
English to Hungarian translation, Magyar
English to Indonesian translation, Bahasa Indonesia
English to Italian translation, Italiano 
English to Karen translation 
English to Macedonian translation, Mакедонски
English to Nepali translation, नेपाली

 

View the translations here

 


 

Client Testimonials:

 

“All Graduates Interpreters and Translators assists Alfred Health Language Services department with the provision of Telehealth video-conference interpreting service in inpatient and outpatient settings. The set-up of the service was stress-free and managed in a timely fashion. The professionalism, reliability and, flexibility of Ismail and Mikaela helps Language Services to provide quality VRI to Alfred Health LEP patients.”

Ida Giaccio, Team Leader, Alfred Health Language Services


“Melbourne Health has a long standing relationship with All Graduates Interpreting and Translating Services. All Graduates take particular care with our portfolio, and we feel our health service is a top priority. All Graduates takes innovative steps to ensure that we are provided with the best outcomes for our health service. One of our biggest achievements is the successful partnership with the Health Direct Telehealth platform which enabled Melbourne Health to provide video interpreters via a secure platform to our patients and staff. As this service was established long before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, there were no delays in providing this service to our staff and patients.”

Christina Leontiou, Interpreter Coordinator, The Royal Melbourne Hospital


“The skilled and highly experienced All Graduates telehealth staff have been instrumental in the success of the virtual remote interpreting service for CaLD patients by liaising with the in-house IT/telehealth team, advising on the workflow coordination of the remote interpreters and assisting with problem solving.”

A major metropolitan health provider

 

Showcasing the Telehealth Training Process

All Graduates
All Graduates | 11 Jun 2019

All Graduates was invited to showcase at the Language Services Innovations Grants Forum at Foundation House last week. There were over 30 guests in attendance from various healthcare and language services providers. Our CEO Ismail Akinci was also in attendance.

Our video interpreting coordinator Mikaela was invited to demonstrate how we train and prepare our interpreters for telehealth consultations – an innovative method of providing languages services which is improving public hospitals’ access to professional interpreters. Well done Mikaela!
#languageservices #telehealth #CALD

 

Melbourne Health and All Graduates connecting Health Professional with multicultural patients across Victoria.

All Graduates
All Graduates | 5 Apr 2019

In 2018, Melbourne Health (Royal Melbourne Hospital [RMH]) expanded its use of video interpreting to facilitate telehealth consultations with multicultural patients. The initiative was supported under the Department of Health and Human Services – Language Services Innovation Grants program It followed research published in 2015[1] by Dr Thomas Schulz, Infectious Diseases Physician at RMH, which showed that patients from culturally and linguistically diverse communities preferred accessing interpreters via video conferencing rather than telephone, in situations when onsite interpreting was not possible.

RMH had worked with All Graduates on the earlier trial and approached them to be involved in this project as the supplier of interpreters via video.  All Graduates took the role of training and supporting the interpreters to use the video platform and ensured the video connections were appropriate and the delivery of the service was of high quality.

Patients from over 100 language backgrounds make up over 50% of RMH patients, indicating an obvious and growing need to:

  • ensure improved access to services
  • remove communication barriers
  • reduce costs and inconvenience for patients/interpreters located in regional/rural Victoria
  • increase efficiency of service delivery through use of technology.

From April 2018 to January 2019 123 requests for video interpreters were made, 57% of these were secured with an interpreter. The most frequently requested language was Karen – 36 requests were made of which 53% were fulfilled . As had been found in the earlier study, patients in particular valued the ability to see and interact with their interpreter rather than being reliant on telephone communication only. The sessions were delivered in 26 languages [see below] involving patients in Melbourne and interpreters located in Melbourne and remotely throughout Victoria, and across NSW, Qld, and WA.

Video interpreting is currently delivered using the Commonwealth Government’s Health Direct telehealth platform, which enables browser-enabled videoconferencing accessible by any phone, tablet or computer. Using Health Direct, any health service can link to patients or interpreters in any location, and experience a high-quality audio-visual connection. In collaboration with RMH, All Graduates used administrator-level access to:

  • allow customisation of the interpreter’s virtual waiting room
  • undertake triage in relation to conference connections
  • quality assure the connection prior to bringing the interpreter into the consultation.

Throughout the period, patients and interpreters alike enjoyed the user-friendly technology and ease of access to the video platform via the internet. One highly experienced Maltese interpreter commented that the video interpreting platform far surpassed any system used previously in his work interpreting with the courts, as no additional software, effort or expertise was required to connect to the videoconference. A Rohingya interpreter was able to successfully provide eight video interpreting sessions over two months while situated overseas. In another instance, an interpreter from a rare language located in regional Victoria, delivered an interpreting session via video which potentially saved RMH over $700 in anticipated travel expenses.

The project has been successful in embedding video as a standard means of improving access to interpreter’s for the significant refugee/immigrant populations living in Victoria, across a range of language backgrounds. It has demonstrated that any hospital that is enabled, through Health Direct, can engage interpreters from remote locations to provide interpreting services to their CALD patients .  A benefit of the approach is the access to a nation-wide pool of interpreters, which is much larger than that which can be realistically supplied in onsite interpreting situations in Melbourne. During the initial period, Interpreter locations ranged from metro Melbourne (Hungarian), to Yackandandah and Nhill (Karen), to the suburbs of Sydney (Indonesian, French), Canberra (Amharic), Queensland (Kirundi) and WA (French and Malay). In these early stages, patients were all located in Melbourne with their healthcare professional, and the interpreters, remotely located, provided services via video.

Following success of the initial period, demand for the service has grown and includes the following languages:   Amharic, Arabic, Burmese, Hakka, Karen, Kiswahili, Lao, Malay, Maltese Rohingya, Samoan, Tamil, Thai, Tibetan and Urdu.

Feedback from the patient and healthcare professional experience has been very positive, and it is particularly valued when it is able to be arranged at short notice, and a wider range of interpreting professionals can be sourced from metropolitan and regional locations around the country. Video interpreting technology has enormous potential to improve service access, delivery and flexibility, and reduce costs. Over time, the rollout of this capability will make consultations between any health professional, patient and interpreter in any location around the country a real possibility.

 

Telehealth consultations were delivered using interpreters in the following languages:

Amharic, Arabic, Burmese, Chin (Mizo), Finnish, French, Gujarati, Hungarian, Indonesian, Karen, Kirundi, Macedonian, Malay, Malayalam, Min Nan, Rohingya, Samoan, Somali, Spanish, Tamil, Tibetan, Tigre, Timorese Hakka, Turkish, Urdu and Vietnamese.

[1] Schulz TR, Leder K, Akinci I and Biggs B-A (2015), Improvements in patient care: videoconferencing to improve access to interpreters during clinical consultations for refugee and immigrant patients, Australian Health Review 39(4), pp395-399, 23 March