Medical Signbank project
Medical Signbank: Sign language planning and development in interpreter-mediated medical and mental health care delivery for Deaf Australians
| Project leaders: | A/Prof Trevor Johnston & Dr Jemina Napier |
| PhD students: | Georgina Major |
| Funding: | Australian Research Council Linkage Project |
| Industry partners: | National Auslan Interpreter Booking & Payment Service (NABS) and NSW Health Care Interpreting Service (HCIS) |
Aims
- to establish an effective, shared and standardized sign language vocabulary for the discussion of medical and mental health issues by deaf clients and health professionals—mediated through Australian Sign Language (Auslan) interpreters—so as to improve the health outcomes of this socially and economically disadvantaged group of people.
- to develop an internet-based lexicon and encyclopaedic dictionary, called Medical Signbank
Objectives
- standardize Auslan medical and mental health terminology
- improve health professional-deaf client/patient communication
- improve the physical and mental health of deaf people.
Approach
This study will combine quantitative and qualitative approaches to develop medical and mental health glossaries; collect information on terminology definitions and the signs currently used for medical and mental health terms throughout Australia. This will be achieved through the development of the Medical Signbank website which will enable on-going feedback from, and consultation with, Auslan interpreters, the Deaf community and healthcare providers to determine which signs and explanations to include in the Medical Signbank. It will involve the statistical analysis of the data with respect to most popular or consistently used signs, and filming of signs and explanations to include in the Medical Signbank. A further related study will involve the observation and discourse analysis of interpreter-mediated interactions.
Method & design
1. Establish Medical Signbank website After the migration of the current Auslan Signbank pilot site from its temporary site to Macquarie University, the facility will be duplicated and redesigned to reflect the needs of the Medical Signbank study and resource development. The site will be launched and promoted to Auslan interpreters and interpreting service providers, the Deaf community and healthcare professionals.
2. On-line surveys Auslan interpreters employed by NABS and HCIS and Deaf Societies and who are members of the Australian Sign Language Interpreters Association (ASLIA) will be contacted and asked to complete a six-monthly survey. Deaf clients will be invited through Deaf Australia to participate in a stakeholder-specific survey available on the site; and GPs and other medical or mental health service providers will also be contacted through their relevant professional associations and invited to participate in a stakeholder-specific survey available on the site. The surveys will seek information on most common medical and mental health encounters between deaf people and health care professionals; terminology most commonly used in these contexts; terminology that presents the most difficulty in understanding; terminology for which no signs exist; signs used for various concepts by deaf people and interpreters and accuracy of those signs in reflecting those concepts and definitions.
3. On-line feedback Auslan interpreters employed by NABS, HCIS and Deaf Societies and who are members of ASLIA will be asked to participate in linguistic feedback sessions on a regular basis, to report new or improvised signs, signs successfully or unsuccessfully used with clients, medical or mental health terminology for which no sign appears to exist and the lack of which has caused a problem in actual interpreting situations. Deaf clients and health care professionals will once again be invited to provide feedback.
4. Extraction of statistics Statistics will be extracted from the Medical Signbank database on sign appraisal by all stakeholders, in terms of accuracy, comprehension and popularity.
5. Linguistic analysis The linguistic requirements of interpreters and deaf clients will be monitored and analysed through (i) a survey of essential medical and mental health terminology identifying those areas in which no conventional Auslan sign exists; (ii) formulation of the principles of appropriateness of production of signs in the Auslan vocabulary (e.g., according to language internal principle of phonological well-formedness, or semantic appropriateness and distinctiveness within the existing lexicon of Auslan).
6. Focus group discussions Focus group discussions will be convened with Auslan interpreters and members of the deaf community to evaluate new signs. Those neologisms favoured by the focus groups that are supported by statistics from MedSignbank and shown through linguistic analysis to be well formed will be filmed and posted on Medical Signbank for interpreters and deaf clients to view.
7. Presentation of research findings on Medical Signbank The results of surveys and user feedback will be continuously built into the information displayed on Medical Signbank. Building on the pilot version of “Auslan Signbank”, these capabilities will be built into Medical Signbank.