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Doctors who use Google Translate to talk to patients want a better option

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Re: Doctors who use Google Translate to talk to patients want a better option

#121

In US ALL doctors have to be trained in Spanish so that they can serve the hispanic population. This type of systemic racism against hispanics shouldn't be tolerated and we need put an end to it.

As a native Spanish speaker who remembers not speaking English and whose mom makes silly English mistakes with her Dr. (I went to a restaurant and got “intoxicated” instead “food poisoned”)…

No.

We made the decision to move here. Why should Dr.s learn Spanish instead of us English?

Also, there are plenty of Dr. who speak Spanish (upper middle classes fetishize us and love to show off their basic Spanish)

Finally, Dr. training is brutal enough as it is without adding the burden of a new language. I want my family Dr. to focus their time on their cardiology classes. My mom can collect more funny anecdotes.

Im sure you feel well, but this suggestion is patronizing and reeks of what is now called “white savior complex”.

Re: Doctors who use Google Translate to talk to patients want a better option

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

You can not buy legitimate painkillers more powerful than Tramadol on the darknet. all legitimate pills have been bought, sold, and removed from the open market, monthes in advanced, years ago.. the safest thing you can buy to treat pain on the internet is tramadol, or, believe it or not, is... black tar heroin. everything else is Fent.

According to wikipedia the reason tramadol has a ceiling point is because it depends on the number of CYP2D6 enzymes. This can theoretically easily be bypassed by co-administrating a CYP2D6 inhibitor however doing so require research and care about dose since a CYP inhibitor can in some contexts upregulate a drug dose potency by 1000X

Re: Doctors who use Google Translate to talk to patients want a better option

#123

I don't know anything about the person in the article but if you still don't speak the language X years after immigrating to a country you have no one but yourself to blame for these kinds of situations.

I guess I know why the parent is downvoted but in the end the responsibility is on both sides. If you don't speak fluent English you ask for interpreters in Spanish, Chinese, you name it. You can't insists on speaking an unpopular dialect/accents, can't even specify what best describe your dialect/accents, and expect anything from the hospitals.

Re: Doctors who use Google Translate to talk to patients want a better option

#124
post #12

Deepl is a better option. It feels several years ahead of Google Translate in quality. I know enough Japanese to hurt myself, and Deepl is definitely giving the superior translations, by far, which is great for my studies. As an analogy, it’s like going from 144p to 360p (a good human translation ranges from 720p to 4k+). Yeah 360p video is still blurry but it’s in a different league than 144p.

The problem with machine translation is not the obvious general mediocrity, but the occasional undetected catastrophic failure, especially in medical context. I don't think DeepL (or any other fully automated system) is any more reliable in this sense.

Mediocre human translation can be catastrophically wrong as well. Mediocrity just isn't good enough when a mistake can cost someone's life. The worse the translator (machine or human), the more catastrophic mistakes it makes per 1000 lines of text. If a professional human translator isn't available, it makes sense to use the best alternative available. Deepl has a free web interface.

Re: Doctors who use Google Translate to talk to patients want a better option

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can not buy legitimate painkillers more powerful than Tramadol on the darknet. all legitimate pills have been bought, sold, and removed from the open market, monthes in advanced, years ago.. the safest thing you can buy to treat pain on the internet is tramadol, or, believe it or not, is... black tar heroin. everything else is Fent.

According to wikipedia the reason tramadol has a ceiling point is because it depends on the number of CYP2D6 enzymes. This can theoretically easily be bypassed by co-administrating a CYP2D6 inhibitor however doing so require research and care about dose since a CYP inhibitor can in some contexts upregulate a drug dose potency by 1000X

I meant, you cannot safely, as everything else, due to market forces, has fent in it.

The only products on the market that have a near 0 chance of being fent are Tramadol and BTH.

Re: Doctors who use Google Translate to talk to patients want a better option

#126

I don't know anything about the person in the article but if you still don't speak the language X years after immigrating to a country you have no one but yourself to blame for these kinds of situations.

I guess I know why the parent is downvoted but in the end the responsibility is on both sides. If you don't speak fluent English you ask for interpreters in Spanish, Chinese, you name it. You can't insists on speaking an unpopular dialect/accents, can't even specify what best describe your dialect/accents, and expect anything from the hospitals.

People don't choose their native languages and everyone should expect adequate care at a hospital when they need it.

Re: Doctors who use Google Translate to talk to patients want a better option

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with machine translation is not the obvious general mediocrity, but the occasional undetected catastrophic failure, especially in medical context. I don't think DeepL (or any other fully automated system) is any more reliable in this sense.

Can any automated solution be reliable enough? I don't think so unless you can prove it does less harm than a professional medical translator.

We should pay more for translators. But translation is an area where people like to cut costs. The translation industry simply doesn't pay enough to attract the volume of people required, at the level of skill required. And with machine translation getting better, not worse, I don't see this trend reversing without regulation... even if machine translation is still nowhere near human level.

Re: Doctors who use Google Translate to talk to patients want a better option

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proportion of patients who become addicted from properly prescribed opioids is extremely small. The majority of addicts created were provided with opioids that were not appropriate for their particular medical situation, in doses that were too high, and on a regimen that exceeded in length what was supported by the medical evidence. The proportion of new cancer patients who go on to receive palliative care that i…

A meta study of 38 studies from 7 years ago on patients using opioids for chronic pain found that 21-29% of the patients misuse the drugs and 8-12% of the patients are addicted to them. That doesn't seem "extremely small" like you said, though maybe it's better now. I think there are reasons why opioids are no longer recommended for the treatment of most patients with chronic pain that you aren't fairly acknowledging…

I’ll agree I wouldn’t describe that as extremely small. The misuse stat is pretty bad. The addiction though…essentially for every 10 people who are treated for chronic pain, 1 of them gets addicted? With 9/10 of those people getting to live a more pleasant life…Chronic pain is awful, and the good done by alleviating it might be worth that cost.

Re: Doctors who use Google Translate to talk to patients want a better option

#129
It is so hard to provide a similar level of care when I'm taking care of a patient who does not speak the same language as me. So much of what we do in medicine depends on pre-test probability which in turn is hugely influenced by the history that we obtain from our patients. Good interpreters are wonderful assets but unforunately it's an area where some hospitals cut corners. We have only video translators at my hospital. Trying to communicate with a patient with dementia, hard of hearing, and WiFi connection/lag issues is all but impossible.

Re: Doctors who use Google Translate to talk to patients want a better option

#130

I and some others in the healthcare/healthcare tech spaces volunteered to create a discharge templating system for many of the top non-English and non-Spanish languages used in the United States - specifically the top languages in the Northwest to start. Our offering utilized data from, and would have been integrated with, an EMR whose name means "particularly impressive" even if their response was anything but. Afte…

My partner has used an EMR called Epic in her work and it, like all EMRs it seems, is trash. Government protections and a moat of network effects, they’re untouchable.

I'm building an EMR right now. Can I ask what sub-surgical field your partner works in?
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