For Samantha, a routine breast screening appointment had always come with an extra layer of anxiety. As a member of the deaf community, Samantha had spent years navigating healthcare appointments through guesswork and lip-reading — never quite sure she’d understood everything the way she needed to.
This time, when Samantha arrived for her screening, a qualified BSL interpreter was waiting for her — booked in advance as part of the service’s ongoing work to make screening genuinely accessible to deaf patients. Every step of the appointment, from the initial chat to the mammogram itself, was explained clearly and directly, in her own language.
“For the team, it was the result of months of work: training staff in deaf-awareness, building relationships with local deaf community groups, and rethinking how appointment letters, reminders, and consent conversations are delivered”
Faiza Chaudhri, Cancer Screening Improvement Lead (Breast).
The screening found something that needed further investigation. What followed was a diagnosis no one wants to hear: breast cancer. But because Samantha had attended her screening, understood every step of it, and felt able to ask questions without a communication barrier standing in her way, it was caught early enough to act on.
Samantha went on to have treatment — and today, she is cancer-free.
For Faiza and the team, Samantha’s story is proof of exactly why this work matters.
Samantha’s journey is a powerful reminder of why accessible healthcare isn’t a nice-to-have — it can be the difference between someone attending, understanding, and acting on a screening that saves their life. Faiza and the breast screening team’s work with the Deaf community is now being looked at as a model for other services across the trust.
Leave a Reply