Necessity of sign language at medical support for people with a hearing disability: Providing safe and reassuring health care

摘要

Dear Editor, Around 300 000 people with a hearing disability (PHD), which includes congenital hearing disorder (CHD), post-lingual hearing loss, and hearing impaired people live in Japan. Those with a CHD have difficulty in acquiring language, and many elderly persons with CHD have signing skills and a small vocabulary. In 2000, a Japan Research Institute surveyed on barrier faced by the hearing impaired and revealed that hospitals are one of the most inconvenient facilities, next to public transportation (Mizuno 2003). In 2011, the Tokyo Sign Language Interpreter Dispatch Center received 6233 interpreter requests from PHD, and 4261 (68%) of these requests were healthcare related. However, there is only about 30 medical facilities in Japan that have a staff sign language interpreter and are sign-language compliant. Besides there are many cases in which patients are refused treatment on account of PHD. There are only a few hospitals that PHD can visit without anxiety. On the bright side, regular sign language courses for medical personnel are offered in Hiroshima Prefecture, which has Japan’s first nursing home for the hearing impaired. Moreover, Hiroshima International University offers sign language courses in its Faculty of Healthcare and Faculty of Health and Welfare.