First aid for communication

Our hospitals support patients who are in need of additional language assistance. Our aim is not only to ensure quality care for non-native speakers, hearing impaired or visually impaired patients, but also to enable care professionals to communicate with patients in an accessible way.

Every day, we strive to provide patient-centred care. At Maria Middelares General Hospital and St Vincent General Hospital in Deinze, badges are available for hearing impaired or visually impaired patients. These badges inform each care provider of the patient's need for additional, personalised support. Speak to a reception, secretarial or departmental staff member to obtain a badge.

The Patient Experience Working Group developed these badges based on feedback from patients and in close consultation with relevant patient organisations.

The badge is only issued to those patients who want it, regardless of how they enter the hospital.

Do you speak another language or are you deaf or hard of hearing? Then you can let an interpreter assist you. Find out how to request an interpreter via the button below.

You can request an interpreter only at Maria Middelares General Hospital (Ghent) and Ghent-Bruges).

The box gives patients who have verbal communication problems a voice again.’

Eline Roggeman - speech therapist

The EHBC (First Aid for Communication Problems) box is designed to support communication with patients who cannot express themselves verbally or who do with difficulty. A thematic pictorial chart (e.g. hygiene concerns, toilet use, mobility ... ) has been added to this toolkit of communication support tools. Patients can use this chart to express their questions.

At Maria Middelares General Hospital, we offer breakfast and dinner with a bread buffet trolley. Our patients, therefore, have free choice in what they choose to eat and drink. For patients who have communication difficulties (e.g. patients with dementia or patients who had a brain haemorrhage), making their choice clear is not always straightforward. That is why we developed a flipbook with photos of our offerings. This allows patients to independently choose what they want to eat or drink.

This tool is only available at Maria Middelares General Hospital.

Every page of this website has the text-to-speech function. This function allows you to listen to an audio version while you follow the highlighted text. It is a useful function for people who have problems with reading, for example, or who have a visual impairment or who are learning Dutch.

Do the standard settings not meet your expectations? Then you can simply use the menu to adjust the reading speed and the colours. You can also select a web page in order to listen to it, and so that you do not have to start from the beginning.

The selected text can also always be translated into another language via Google Translate.

Watch the video below.