Lingvô allows health care professionals to better understand symptoms of a patient when there are linguistic or communication barriers. This version is aimed at the emergency ward, illustrating the symptoms commonly found in triage.

Often, patients that come to the emergency ward are emotionally unstable, anxious and physically weak, and they struggle to express their symptoms; all the more so when they come from different socio-cultural backgrounds. Lingvô overcomes these difficulties by giving patients or their parents the opportunity to communicate with the nurse visually or, otherwise, answer the nurse’s questions.

Lingvô illustrates through pictograms and icons, common pain, discomfort, trauma or medication recognized by the Canadian Emergency Triage Scale. Created as a graphic chart, this application organizes all the images in the same order as the questions nurses commonly asked their patients. Lingvô shortens the validation process of linguistic differences facilitating the nurse’s evaluation and making it more efficient and faster. This application offers a visual alternative to verbal communication when the language, the culture, the level of education and other communication handicaps represent a barrier.

To use Lingvo:

-Go from one category of images to another by selecting the visual information you would like to communicate
-Click on the image you wish to choose
-The image will appear in a box at the top right corner of your screen
-Validate your choice by clicking on the image. The word that corresponds to the image will appear in the list at the right of the screen.
-All the words validated will enter the list
-Click on the trashcan to erase all the words and start over. If you wish to erase one of the words, click on the “X” on the right end of the word.

Lingvo comes in English, French and Spanish versions.