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Syrian Refugee Medical Assessment Translation Tool

Reducing Language Barriers Between Syrian Refugees and Healthcare Providers

These free, secure online tools have been developed to allow patients to complete a full history and mental health screening in Arabic or Armenian, with the results automatically translated to English for healthcare providers to review and add to the patient record. Collecting this information in the patient’s first language can help ensure a more complete and accurate history is collected, including concerns around sensitive issues such as mental health.

“By decreasing the impact of language barriers, the medical translation tool will be incredibly valuable in helping us provide the highest level of care for these refugees.”

Dr. Sharon Domb, Family Physician with the Sunnybrook Family Health team

How to Use the Translation Tools

Accessing the Forms
Completing the Forms
Reviewing the Clinical Note
Accessing the Forms
Accessing the Forms Online

From a web browser, click on the appropriate form button for the patient to complete from the list at the right.

Accessing the Forms in Ocean

Current Ocean clients will find the Syrian Refugee eForm already in their Ocean form library and available from within their EMR. You can use the Syrian Refugee eForms as you would any other Ocean form. To enable language selection, follow the steps below:

  • Go to Admin – Site Account – and enable the appropriate languages (check the Armenian and Arabic boxes).
  • Go to the Tablet Settings and under the Introduction tab, ensure that “Use Birthday Validation” is selected
  • Still in Tablet Settings, under the Demographics tab, ensure that Birth Date is checked.
Arabic Medical History Form
Armenian Medical History Form
English Medical History Form
Arabic PHQ-9
Completing the Forms
Patient Completes the Form

The patient completes the form in the browser window (online users) or on the Ocean Tablet (Ocean users). When they get to the bottom of the form, they select the “Finish” button (click on image to the right to see how it looks).

Reviewing the Clinical Note
Clinician Reviews the Clinical Note

After selecting “Finish”, a page displaying the patient’s responses in English will appear as a clinical note. This can be reviewed, copied and pasted into the patient record, and/or printed. (Click on the example at the right to expand the image and see what a completed clinical note looks like).

For Ocean Tablet users with an integrated EMR, the note will automatically appear in the patient record.

About the Translation Tools

The Syrian Refugee Medical Intake tools were developed as part of Cognisant Causes, a charitable program run by CognisantMD that provides resources – in the form of project-based technology and marketing support – to non-profit healthcare organizations at no cost.

To ensure patient health information is kept secure, data is encrypted both in transmission and in temporary storage. No personally-identifiable information is included on the form. The Platform is fully PHIPA-compliant, and all data remains in Canada.

Special thanks to Dr. Faisal Al-Sani, Dr. Nour Khatib, Mrs. Salpi Der Ghazarian, Dr. Ani Hasserjian and Mrs. Seza Nazarian of Armenian Family Support Services, Holy Trinity Armenian Church, for their assistance with translations.

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