MERCED, Calif. – Laotian refugee Ker Moua, ailing and unable to speak English, enlisted her 12-year-old son as her medical interpreter.
“She tells me where it hurts, and then we go to the doctor together. But I don’t really know what a uterus is,” said her son, Jue, whose English is peppered with words from his sixth-grade textbooks and the football field.
“She tells me things I don’t know how to say. Sometimes I tell the doctor something else.”
His mother’s problem was diagnosed as a prolapsed uterus, the result of bearing 14 children. She began taking medication in the doses her son described, but soon felt so dizzy she couldn’t get out of bed for two days.
Jue’s mistranslation of the doctor’s orders caused his mother to take the wrong amount of medicine. While the error didn’t cause lasting harm, it’s the kind of problem California medical officials want to correct.
The use of children as medical interpreters is a common practice in states with large immigrant populations such as California. Yet, recent research has described the potentially lethal consequences of faulty translations.
Now, California is considering rules that would prevent children from interpreting at private hospitals, doctors’ offices or clinics. The rules would not apply in emergencies.
This month, the California Department of Managed Health Care is holding hearings on the proposed regulations. A group representing the state’s largest managed care plans estimates the proposal to hire qualified translators would cost $15 million.
California would be the first state to implement such a wide-ranging ban, said Mara Youdelman, attorney with the National Health Law Program in Washington, D.C. Other states have restrictions, but none goes as far as California’s proposal. Rhode Island, for example, requires all hospitals to provide interpreters older than 16, but the rule does not extend to doctor’s offices or clinics.
Experts say children lack the vocabulary and emotional maturity to serve as effective interpreters. In a state in which 40 percent of the population speaks a language other than English at home, policy-makers say California could set a national precedent.
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