Translating informed consent in maternal healthcare and beyond

Friday 7 October 2022

9am-4pm BST

Online international colloquium

 

Informed consent is integral to maternity care. Throughout pregnancy, labour, birth, and the postnatal period, the childbearing woman or person, or parents, are regularly required to provide either verbal or written consent for any care, action, or intervention. Without this explicit consent no action can be undertaken. For people with limited host language proficiency, giving consent without full understanding of the medical language can be a significant issue, especially when the decisions taken have far-reaching consequences for the health of the parent and the baby.

Evidence shows that perinatal outcomes for childbearing women or people from minority ethnic backgrounds are much poorer than for those from majority backgrounds. Factors that contribute to these poorer outcomes include language barriers that limit the people giving information about their own well-being or needs, understanding the information provided, and providing consent.

In line with our project’s aims of bringing different perspectives together in maternal health, this colloquium is open globally to researchers and practitioners with an interest in the translation and interpreting of informed consent in maternal and neonatal healthcare, as well as those working on other aspects of healthcare. We believe that such cross-professional and multidisciplinary conversations are key to understanding the impediments to optimum care in the case of childbearing women or people with limited host language proficiency.

The colloquium is open to U.K. and international researchers in midwifery, obstetrics, translation and interpreting studies, medical ethics, medical anthropology, medical/health humanities, among other areas, and practitioners in these fields.

The questions we would like to explore include:

  • Issues regarding the translation and interpreting of informed consent antenatally, during labour and birth, and postnatally
  • Good practice in and better integration of translation and interpreting in the context of maternal health
  • Translation technologies used during pregnancy, labour and birth (e.g. video-interpreting, telephone interpreting, translation apps)
  • Informed consent as a fulfilment of legal obligations and informed consent as an ethical prerequisite in the communication between healthcare staff and parents
  • Experiences and research in other healthcare areas that may be of benefit to the translation of informed consent in maternal healthcare

There is no charge to attend this event.

The presentations will be 20min talk+10 min Q&A.

We are also hoping to hold a roundtable discussion, depending on interest.

For more information and to send your abstracts, please contact Dr Şebnem Susam-Saraeva at s.susam-saraeva@ed.ac.uk by Thursday 30 June 2022.

You can register for this event through Eventbrite.

The event will be held on Microsoft Teams. Once the registration closes on 6 October 2022 noon, all ticket holders will be sent the instructions for joining in.

 

https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/translating-informed-consent/colloquium/