Spoken interpretation services available to community specialists

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 63, No. 10, December 2021, Page 413 News

When working in their community offices, specialists can access free spoken language interpreting services as part of a 1-year pilot project, funded by the Specialist Services Committee (SSC)—a partnership of Doctors of BC and the BC government.

SSC is providing $50 000 for this pilot project in response to physicians’ feedback about supporting the delivery of safe and equitable patient care to diverse populations. Previously, this service was available to specialists who chose to pay privately or who work within the boundaries of health authority sites. Family doctors have access to the service through the PHSA.

Accessible through the Provincial Language Service, professional interpreters offer services that are available:

  • Via telephone.
  • 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
  • On demand.
  • In roughly 240 languages.

How specialists can connect with an interpreter:

  1. Call 1 833 718-2154 (toll free).
  2. Select a language.
  3. Enter your access code, which was emailed to you by your section head, or contact SSC at sscbc@doctorsofbc.ca.
  4. Indicate you are a member of Doctors of BC.
  5. Wait 30 to 60 seconds to connect with an interpreter.

For more information, visit www.phsa.ca/health-professionals/professional-resources/interpreting-services.

. Spoken interpretation services available to community specialists. BCMJ, Vol. 63, No. 10, December, 2021, Page(s) 413 - News.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply