Medical Interpreting Seminar

On July 1st, Asahikawa had the honor of hosting the inaugural event, which we call, "What's Medical Communications?" This was the first attempt to deal with the topic in Japan, and we had great success to have more than 90 participants from all over Japan. In addition to the health care interpreter's training course, we offered participants the opportunity to explore the other aspects of "Medical Communications", including medical translating, proofreading, editing, and the like.

Seminar Objectives

The main objective of the seminar was to get to know each profession in the field of medical communication. Doctors should know the existence of medical editors to improve their academic papers. Medical translators and interpreters can expand their professional knowledge through each other's perspectives. Furthermore, regular citizens have an opportunity to sit with health care professionals and talk about health care system vis a vis globalization. To achieve the objectives, we provided the following 4 sections with the participants. 1. Outline: Through the lecture, we provided the overview of medical communications. 2. Experience: In the workshop, participants experienced medical interpreting or translating. 3. Networking: In the workshop, and the small reception, participants had an opportunity to get to know other participants. 4. Educational Materials: We provided various handouts about medical communications.

For Public Awareness

We also tried to raise public awareness about "health care interpreting" in Japan. There are three big issues about health care interpreting in Japan. First, there are no national standardized skills-training programs for health care interpreting. Second, there's a lack of human resources including interpreters themselves, and coordinators who support the interpreters. As the third problem, there's also a lack of public awareness about health care interpreting.

Perspectives of Medical Communications

If we can raise public awareness about health care interpreting, the more people will get involved and train to develop their skills. Also the more people who support and understand the need, the more likely jobs will be created for those trained people.

Thanks to this year's success, we've decided to have the second seminar the next year. By introducing the participants to the other aspects of medical communications, we hope that they can see possible career opportunities. We hope that participants will then become and highly motivated to continue developing the field of medical communications.