Interpreter Services
Do you need an interpreter?
St Vincent’s has staff interpreters who provide free, confidential interpreting in Greek, Chinese (Simplified Chinese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka), Vietnamese, Italian, Arabic and Macedonian. Other languages are also available on request. Please ask your doctor or nurse to organise one for you.
Booking an interpreter at St Vincent's Clinics
Please ensure your doctor requests an interpreter when making a referral for you to see a specialist at St Vincent’s Clinics. You may also speak to a St Vincent's staff member to request an interpreter when you make your appointment. Interpreters are available to patients with a valid Medicare card.
If you cannot come to your appointment please call St Vincent’s Clinics on (03) 9288 3475 and cancel your interpreter booking as well.
If you, your family member or friend need regular language support for
day to day (non-clinical) care whilst in hospital or an aged care facility,
consider the SVHM Talk to Me Application.
What is the Talk to me App?
To facilitate better conversations with patients and residents of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, our teams in collaboration with the City of Melbourne created the Talk to Me App.
Talk to Me is a progressive Web Application built for iPad, iPhone and Android devices to facilitate brief, sentence based, basic information in multiple languages other than English. It can be used by patients and health professionals alike.
Currently, the app is available in Arabic, Cantonese, Croatian, Hakka, Italian, Greek, Macedonian, Mandarin, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish and Vietnamese. By mid-2022 Dinka, Farsi and Somali will be added.
The Talk to Me app assists staff to communicate with patients and residents in day-to-day care, between the key moments when an interpreter would be accessed.
Please note that Talk to Me does NOT replace the vital role of an interpreter. An interpreter should always be engaged to communicate the important points in the continuum of patient care.
The Talk to me app can be accessed on https://talktome.svhm.org.au. Please ensure to use Google Chrome
For more information email CulturalDiversity@svha.org.au or download the information flyer.
Other Languages