"Provision of BSL interpreting services"

My mother is profoundly deaf and reliant on BSL. She has had three serious medical events this year, each of which led to emergency admittance to hospital and in-patient stays. Each time she has gone into hospital, I have had to explain the process for booking BSL interpreters, rather than them knowing or being aware of the process.

Staff have commented that pen and paper should suffice for communication; however, this is completely inappropriate beyond simple questions. It is ignorant to assume that a Deaf person would be able to understand medical terms and discussions written on paper and passed to them. 

Overall the experience of NHS services for Deaf people is incredibly poor and more needs to be done to improve deaf awareness amongst staff and services.

Staff skills

One on occasion my deaf brother (who has some hearing and speech, but struggles to keep up in conversations) was asked by a member of the medical staff to attend hospital to interpret, as a BSL interpreter could not be sourced. This is completely inappropriate for obvious reasons that he himself uses interpreters for formal or complicated situations.

My father and brother are also deaf, meaning I am the only hearing family member. On numerous occasions I have been asked to interpret, which was inappropriate as I was very upset and worried about my mother, but was not left with much choice.

Furthermore, staff were not aware that they can use a Chromebook/iPad to contact an interpreter on screen for ad hoc discussions in the absence of an in person interpreter. Not one staff member knew about this or was able to facilitate it. At weekends or public holidays it is incredibly difficult to get in person interpreters and there appears to be no process in place for these circumstances, such as the use of the aforementioned equipment.

Furthermore, there was publicising earlier in the pandemic of medical masks with clear windows being made available to medical staff so that the mouth can be seen - we did not see these masks once and no one knew about them when we asked. Therefore, staff had to remove masks when communicating with my mother, placing her at a higher risk of contracting Covid-19 as an inpatient than hearing patients due to poor communication and inadequate PPE. It is baffling how some medical staff are completely unaware and naïve to what being profoundly deaf means and the impact it has on communication - e.g. shouting at my mother, as if she is going to hear something when she is completely deaf.

This is a much simplified version of what happened and is not limited to just the hospital stays, but has been going on for years. As a child, I was used as a BSL interpreter by medical staff etc.

Being listened to