Helsinki midwives voice concerns over language issues with increasing number of foreign-born mothers

Interpreters used in delivery-rooms almost daily

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By Kristiina Markkanen
     
      Midwives in the Helsinki area have voiced their concerns over the situation of those women in labour who are unversed in languages.
      In recent years the number of expectant mothers speaking languages other than Finnish or Swedish as their mother-tongue has increased within the Helsinki and Uusimaa Hospital District (HUS).
      Simultaneously there has been a rise in the number of those women in labour with whom no common language can be found despite the use of interpreters and the relatively large arsenal of languages possessed by the area’s midwives themselves.
     
At maternity wards in the Greater Helsinki hospitals the women in labour already speak nearly 70 different languages as their mother-tongue.
      “Giving birth is a very sensitive matter, as is the taking care of a small baby, especially if the infant happens to suffer from an ailment of any kind”, says head nurse Soile Kivijärvi from the Hyvinkää Hospital maternity ward.
      On Friday morning there was an invoice from an Arabic interpreter on Kivijärvi’s desk waiting for an approval.
     
In Hyvinkää, the elevator manufacturer Kone is an employer to a substantial international staff, which means mothers from various ethnic backgrounds will seek their way to the area’s main hospital to give birth.
      According to Kivijärvi, usually English serves the purpose as a lingua franca, and in practice all the hospital’s midwives know quite enough English to get by in the delivery-room.
      In Hyvinkää, there are also midwives who speak Russian and Spanish.
     
Kivijärvi’s main concerns are for those mothers who do not speak any language apart from their own mother-tongue.
      “Their mother-tongue can be for example Vietnamese or Thai. Often their husbands speak Finnish very well.”
      Kivijärvi explains that sometimes no interpreters are available, and a relative or a husband has to step in.
      In Kivijärvi’s opinion, however, it is not a good idea that the husband takes on the role of an interpreter when the subject-matter can often be very intimate.
      “It would be better if there was a professional interpreter there explaining what the doctor is saying.”
     
Marjukka Sallinen, chairwoman of Uusimaa Midwives' Association, works at the Jorvi Hospital, where there are plenty of Swedish-speaking mothers from the city of Espoo, but also women of various foreign extractions.
      According to Sallinen, not all the midwives are fluent enough even in Swedish. Sallinen herself is one of them. If a Swedish-speaking mother does not know any Finnish, the staff has sometimes resorted to using English instead.
      Sallinen, too, is concerned about the situation of those women who do not speak even passable Finnish or English.
      The women of Somali origin often have next of kin with them, who can help. For others, efforts are made to find an interpreter.
     
In the Helsinki and Uusimaa Hospital District’s seven maternity wards, more than 18,000 babies are delivered each year.
      In the capital area hospitals of Naistenklinikka, Jorvi, and Kätilöopisto, the women in labour speak nearly 70 different languages.
      After Finnish and Swedish, the most commonly spoken languages by the mothers are Russian, Somali, English, Estonian, Arabic, Sango, Kurdish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, French, Turkish, and German.
      Sango is spoken, for example, in Central Africa, Congo, and Cameroon.
     
Apart from Finnish and Swedish, the mothers have announced mostly Russian, English, Estonian, and Somali as their preferred language of communication.
      The syllabus for the midwifery programme includes Swedish and English courses, and many of the midwives also speak some German, French and Russian.
     
In a client satisfaction survey from a year ago the Swedish-speaking maternity and women's disease patients awarded the HUS hospitals only a weak grade of 6+ (on a 4-to-10 scale, 4=fail and 10=excellent) for the services they provide in Swedish.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 12.12.2009


Links:
  Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa (HUS)

KRISTIINA MARKKANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
kristiina.markkanen@hs.fi