Listen Please app for iPhone and iPad

Listen Please is a clinical translation application for patients to communicate with nurses, doctors and allied health personnel, and vice versa. It is for patients who cant speak at all (e.g. because they have a breathing tube in their airway) but can communicate in some other way, or patients who cant speak English but can speak Mandarin/ Cantonese Chinese, Korean, Samoan, or Tongan. It includes printed and audio translations in these languages, and pictures/ photos to further help understanding. It is a stand alone app and does not need internet access to work.

It is not meant to replace trained clinical translators, but is for those times when the situation is so urgent that a human translator cannot be found in time, or where there is ongoing need such that a translator cannot be there all the time. The clinician question set chosen for urgent need are those where the answer is either unlikely to be obvious on examination or from point of care blood tests. The clinician question/ statement set for everyday care was designed to include hospital procedures done up to the level of intensive care unit care, but most is applicable to the everyday care of any inpatient. The questions were worded to suggest Yes (tick)/ No (cross)/ Dont Know (question mark) answers so that you dont need to translate the patients reply.

If a patient wants to communicate to the clinician, after their language is selected the patient can use the Patient Talks mode to communicate their needs e.g. wanting to speak to ones family/ friends, wanting to go to the toilet. Clinicians can either use the Clinician Asks mode to take a basic history/ perform an physical examination, or the Clinician Explains mode to explain what care is going on or to explain clinical procedures (NOT for gaining informed consent), e.g. inserting an intravenous cannula. There is a session log that records Yes/ No/ Dont know answers so that the clinician can go away from the bedside and write down what has happened; this clears every time a new language is chosen.

Every attempt has been made to ensure the accuracy of the translations but if there are any errors found, or if you have any suggestions, please feel free to contact me.