Preparing for Teaching

by Rachel McKinnie

As part of our SSC project, we decided to try and learn how to take a patient history in BSL. As such, we divided the history into manageable sections, and over a week two members of the group would learn how to sign their section and then teach this to the rest of the group at the next meeting.

Before I started trying to translate my section (patient instructions for the first half of a cranial nerve exam) I was excited to get going and learn more signs. However, I quickly realised that the phrases I had were not easy to translate and quickly became disenchanted with the undertaking. The main difficulty was that I could not find much of what I wanted to say online as a whole phrase (which would have ensured that I had the syntax and signs correct), so I had to build the sentences from scratch. I eventually broke my sentences down to a sufficient level that I could translate on a word by word basis but even then I struggled to find the correct version of the word. In English, a word may sound or look the same as another one, but it can be differentiated which one you mean based on the context in which it is used. However, in BSL you do not have the same context surrounding the words and as such there is a different sign for each different meaning of a word in English. Sometimes it was obvious which one to use but other times it was harder to tell. This is also influenced by BSL having different dialects and as such for some words there were multiple signs that all had the exact same meaning. I found it frustrating trying to work through my translations as I knew what I was looking to say but just could not find the words and felt like I was letting people down as the other teaching sessions had all been very good. Once I had most of it down though, I began to feel better and was proud of what I had accomplished.

While I now have a translated cranial nerve exam that is sufficient for the purposes of group teaching, I know that it is not exact and would not be suitable for clinical practice. This is mostly due to the fact that I could not determine the correct order for the words to go in to form a complete sentence, but I know that they should not go in the order I have done them which is the same as the equivalent sentence in English (http://www.deafsupport.org.uk/grammar-l3.pdf).

The process has given me a greater appreciation for the difficulties related to learning sign language as it is not as easy to translate as I first assumed. As we were relying mostly on free online resources, it would be beneficial if undertaking something similar in the future to have access to more resources and perhaps consult with experienced sign language users to ensure that what we are saying is understandable.

At the start of the project we could not understand why they did not train the majority of hospital staff in BSL so that they did not have to rely on translators to attend to patients needs. I understand now that it would be too difficult to attempt to do a consultation on intricate health matters without extensive training and as such is not a reasonable expectation of busy clinical staff. However, it would not be too complicated or time consuming to teach some basic signs to staff to allow them to better in interact with patients, particularly inpatients, as a translator will not always be present.