The ICSEB patient care team

Published by ICSEB at 13 January, 2023

Many may not be aware that at the Institut Chiari & Siringomielia & Escoliosis de Barcelona (ICSEB), we currently attend to patients from 85 different countries, from five continents, and we provide care in 15 languages.

Our neurosurgical team is formed not only by physicians specialised in neurosurgery, anaesthesiologists, and surgical and assistant nurses, but also by a professional figure that has become central in our work: the patient care contact person. Read a note from a few years ago to learn about the field of expertise covered by the international mediation they deal with: Cultural mediation in the activities at ICSEB.

In Spanish, we call our staff who professionally combine the skills of translators, interpreters, cultural mediators, medical and administrative secretaries, patient spokespersons and liaison, “corresponsal”.

The members of the patient care team have a university degree and native and high-level translation skills in at least four or five languages, are trained internally and externally to collaborate in healthcare, take care of the administrative management of clinical documents, and are trained to mediate in the care relationship between healthcare providers and patients. They all work according to the highest quality standard required by our centre.

Sometimes, before embarking on their trip from abroad to visit and undergo surgery at ICSEB, patients worry about whether they will be provided with translation once they are here. We assure them that this is the case, but we do not explain in detail all the role of the patient care contact person entails.

We believe that most patients will come to understand that role during their experience with our team: it is a professional figure who acts as a bridge between the patient and the physician, their family, and the healthcare professionals, who is aware of everything that has been said and done and who accompanies them during all the services provided here in Barcelona. In addition, they sometimes help with the bureaucratic procedures between the country of origin and Spain.

For the doctor, the “corresponsal” represents the patient, and vice versa, for the patient they represent the doctor. They give them the possibility to understand each other and to do so in a common context which, without cultural mediation and only with translation at the language level, would be insufficient because the health systems and their functioning are different.

Our patient care staff holds the “red thread” of the surgical patient’s relationship with the Institute, from the first contact to the last follow-up, including any medical appointment, report, video-call, preoperative tests, admissions, and procedures.

When a patient is hospitalised, they accompany them to induction, to the operating room, and in the recovery room; they are in direct contact with the ward and with the hospital’s patient care department. They are in charge of each patient’s clinical file, and they also know how to interpret the clinical documentation and the complementary and imaging tests – sufficiently to filter before transmitting it to the doctors – to facilitate their work and optimise their tasks.

In summary, speaking to all those who are hesitant to put themselves in the hands of a medical team far away from home, we wish to convey that, in our case there is no need to worry. We are prepared  to offer everything necessary to welcome you in the best way and to take care of your case thanks to the professionalism and mediation specialisation of our patient care team.