***Now in the top 100 medical apps***
New in version 2.0: enter your own phrases!
PreRound Translator is designed to facilitate conversation between doctors and patients who only speak foreign languages.
In our third year of medical school, my classmates and I recognized that morning rounds usually consisted of a few key questions - some surgical, some medical – but most were brief and to-the-point. If a patient did not speak English, we were forced to call an interpreter to translate those few questions. This process cost us - and the doctors - valuable time, energy, and money.
PreRound is designed to help solve this inconvenience.
We decided to collect translations of common questions from foreign language-speaking patients in a highly diverse community and wrote them down in a transliterated fashion. This way, English speaking medical students, doctors, nurses and other health-care workers can communicate briefly with patients without spending additional time and money. PreRound Translator distributes these translations to the medical iPhone and iPod community.
We tried those translation programs, but we had to retype the same phrases every day! How annoying.
So we asked patients for the following phrases:
Hello, my name is –
Pain
Yes
No
Have you had a bowel movement?
Have you passed gas?
May I examine you?
Sorry
Excuse me
Thank you
We will see you later
In the following languages:
Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Czech, Dutch, Teke-Eboo, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Ndebele, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Sesotho, Spanish, Swahili, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, and Yiddish.
Not all phrases are complete in every language. We currently have 284 phrases (adding up all phrases in all languages) and it’s growing every day.
Of course, these are short questions and must require ‘yes-or-no’ answers. Nevertheless, they get the job done, and can also put a smile on the face of a patient who sees a health care worker attempting to speak his/her language. This is priceless in establishing rapport.
We at Slingshot Scientific feel that small programs like this can alleviate some health care burdens by centralizing a few small tasks in the hospital setting. Nevertheless, we are not liable for any errors in diagnosis or patient management as a result of mistranslation. Consumers agree to use this software at their own risk.
Coming soon! – Recorded translations can be played out loud.
Check out our other apps like Siesta II and Brocas Voice.
Please help us by reporting any errors in translation, or submitting omitted translations to [email protected].
Enjoy!