DICTUM Rescue Königslutter - Digital communication aids for non-German-speaking patients in rescue services

Project Goals

Being able to communicate about acute symptoms and illnesses is the basis of any medical treatment. For non-German-speaking patients and their doctors, situations of mutual incomprehension or inability to make themselves understood are major challenges. This is especially true when no suitable interpreters are immediately available.

In DICTUM Rescue, we want to remedy this situation with a digital communication aid for prehospital rescue services. This is intended to support rescue workers in communicating with their non-German-speaking patients and thus overcome language barriers in situations where interpreters are not available. The communication aid is being developed in close cooperation with actors in the field, and will be used, tested and evaluated in a pilot clinical study. To this end, we are working together with several rescue services in the Helmstedt district.

The application is developed in the sense of an action research intervention in close cooperation with the actors in the field. Once developed, it will be used and tested in a clinical trial. The clinical study is designed as an open interventional, non-randomized study with two control groups (control group I: non-German speaking patients who do not use the communication aid; control group II: German speaking patients who do not use the communication aid; intervention group: non-German speaking patients who use the communication aid). Primary outcome is the improvement of communication with non-German speaking patients in medical emergency situations. Secondary outcome is the improvement of information collection from these patients. By recording health restrictions, an evaluation can be made taking into account the severity of the health restrictions. All data will be collected anonymously.