83.3% to 86.7% of nurses were satisfied with the speed and ability of machine translation for patient assessment

Description #

Nurses were broadly satisfied with the Google Translate conversation mode as a patient-assessment tool: 83.3% were satisfied or very satisfied with the speed with which it could be used, and 86.7% with the ability to use it for patient assessment (Table 2). For reference, 96.7% of nurses were satisfied or very satisfied with the hospital's existing institutional human translation services.

"Additionally, 83.3% and 86.7% of nurses were satisfied or very satisfied with the speed and ability that the translation application could be used for patient assessment, respectively (Table 2)." (Kapoor, 2022, p. 4)

"Most nurses (96.7%) were satisfied or very satisfied with the quality and immediate availability of current institutional human translation services." (Kapoor, 2022, p. 4)

Methods Context #

What? #ⓘ

The observable: nurse satisfaction (5-point Likert scale) with the speed, and separately the ability, that the translation application could be used to assess patients.

"83.3% and 86.7% of nurses were satisfied or very satisfied with the speed and ability that the translation application could be used for patient assessment, respectively" (Kapoor, 2022, p. 4)

How? #ⓘ

Self-reported nurse satisfaction ratings collected after PACU symptom assessments conducted with 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? #ⓘ

PACU nurses at a single US cancer center who cared for the 30 enrolled Spanish-speaking surgical patients (nurse satisfaction denominator 30 per Table 2).

"Institutional review board approval was granted for this cohort study by MD Anderson Cancer Center." (Kapoor, 2022, p. 1)

Other Notes #

Nurse satisfaction with the app (83.3%–86.7%) was somewhat lower than with existing human translation services (96.7%), consistent with the tool being positioned as an adjunct rather than a replacement.

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.