Increasing in-person medical interpreter utilization in the NICU through a bundle of interventions

In-person medical interpretation improves communication with patients who have preferred language other than English (PLOE). Multi-dimensional barriers to use of medical interpreters limit their use in the NICU.

Medical teams in our NICU were not consistently using in-person medical interpreters, leading to ineffective communication with families with PLOE.

Interventions included staff educational sessions and grand rounds regarding equitable language access, distribution of interpreter request cards to families, and allocation of dedicated in-person interpreters for NICU rounds. Interpreter utilization was calculated by total requests per Spanish-speaking person day in the NICU.

Interpreter utilization increased five-fold during the intervention period (from 0.2 to 1.0 requests per Spanish-speaking person day).

We substantially increased our unit in-person interpreter utilization through a bundle of multifaceted interventions, many of which were low-cost. NICUs should regard dedicated medical interpreters as a critical part of the care team.