96.6% of LEP patients were satisfied with machine translations ability to assess their symptoms

Description #

96.6% of the Spanish-speaking LEP patients were satisfied or very satisfied with the ability of the Google Translate conversation mode to assess their symptoms (24 of 29 highly satisfied plus 4 somewhat satisfied; 1 was highly dissatisfied) (Table 2). For comparison, 73.3% of the same patients were satisfied or very satisfied with the hospital's standard human translation services.

"96.6% of patients were satisfied or very satisfied with the ability of the translation application to assess their symptoms (Table 2)." (Kapoor, 2022, p. 4)

"Most patients (73.3%) were satisfied or very satisfied with standard translation services." (Kapoor, 2022, p. 4)

Methods Context #

What? #ⓘ

The observable: patient satisfaction (5-point Likert scale from highly dissatisfied to highly satisfied) with the translation application's ability to assess their symptoms.

"96.6% of patients were satisfied or very satisfied with the ability of the translation application to assess their symptoms" (Kapoor, 2022, p. 4)

How? #ⓘ

Self-reported satisfaction ratings collected after PACU symptom assessment via the A-0016ArtifactA-0016Initial AI draftGoogle TranslateA free, general-purpose machine translation app increasingly used as an ad-hoc communication tool in healthcare settings to bridge language barriers with LEP patients, including via voice-to-voice translation. "One such…, summarized as proportions in Table 2.

"Preformatted questions were played for patients in the PACU through the application using an iPad tablet (Apple) held by the research coordinator (G.C., M.P.F.) at set intervals when nurses would typically evaluate symptoms." (Kapoor, 2022, p. 4)

Who? #ⓘ

30 postoperative Spanish-speaking, Hispanic patients in the PACU at a single US cancer center (satisfaction-with-app denominator 29, as one patient could not remember any details of the PACU experience).

"One patient was unable to remember any details about the PACU experience." (Kapoor, 2022, p. 4)

Other Notes #

Patient satisfaction with the app (96.6%) exceeded satisfaction with the hospital's standard human translation services (73.3%) in this single-arm cohort; the comparison is descriptive, not a controlled contrast.

Caveats #

• Machine-translation feasibility shown only in a 30-patient single-center cohort The feasibility, usability, and satisfaction estimates all come from a single-arm cohort of only 30 patients at one US cancer center, with no comparison group. The authors themselves flag the small sample size, which yields wide confidence intervals (they estimated the 95% CI for a 90% feasibility rate spanned 73.5% to 97.9%) and limits how precisely any of the reported proportions can be interpreted or generalized to other settings.