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Bridging the Gap Medical Interpreter Training
Monday, August 3, 2009 - Friday, August 7, 2009
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2009 Symposium of the National Association of Social Workers, Iowa Chapter
Ira SenGupta presented the keynote speech -From Cultural Bump to Cultural Congruence: Enhancing Cultural Competence in Health and Human Services- at the recently concluded 2009 Symposium of the National Association of Social Workers, Iowa Chapter in Des Moines. The theme of the annual symposium was -Growth, Change, and Competency in a Culturally Diverse World. About 300 social workers attended the meeting ON April 17, 2009 ably coordinated by Kelli Soyer, Executive Director of NASW, Iowa Chapter.
CCHCP, 06/01/2009 CCHCP Presented at National WIC Association's 26th Annual Conference
Ira SenGupta, Executive Director, recently presented on Cultural Competency and Working Effectively with Interpreters at the 26th Annual Conference of the National WIC Association in Nashville, Tennessee. A rich diversity of people access WIC (Women, Infant and Children) services bringing with them worldviews and approaches to diet and nutrition, pregnancy, breastfeeding, alcohol and drug use, family planning, and healthcare that may be different from the WIC staff who serve them. More than 900 WIC staff and administrators attended the conference on May 24 to 27 at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville.
CCHCP, 06/17/2009 Bridging the Gap Training at the Alaska Immigration Justice Project
On March 9 to 13, 2009, Rose Long, Director of the Bridging the Gap (BTG) Interpreter Training Program at CCHCP, presented the week-long training to 23 participants. The class was a very diverse group, languages represented were Laotian, Yup'ik, Spanish, Tagalog, Arabic, Korean, Nuer, Russian, Hmong, Vietnamese, Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian, Portuguese, and Mandarin. Barb Jacobs, Program Manager of the Language Interpreter Center (LIC) of the Alaska Immigration Justice Project (AIJP)successfully coordinated this training. In 2007, the Municipality of Anchorage awarded the Mayor's Community & Non-profit Organization Diversity Award to AIJP. AIJP is dedicated to protecting the human rights of all Alaskans by providing comprehensive immigration legal services and language interpreter services throughout Alaska. Robin Bronen is the Executive Director.
CCHCP, 05/28/2009 |
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Introduction to Medical Interpreting - A provider gives a non-English-speaking patient a prescription, explaining that it is for some suppositories. The interpreter is too embarrassed to admit that he does not know the equivalent word for "suppository" in the patient's language, so he uses the word for "pill" instead. The patient takes the medication orally and ends up in the emergency room.
- After her appointment, a patient's husband asks the interpreter what the doctor said to his wife. Trying to be helpful, the interpreter discloses the happy news that the patient is pregnant. This is not happy news to the husband, as his wife has just arrived from their home country, after being apart from him for 6 months. The couple leaves the clinic with the husband angrily muttering thinly veiled threats of violence.
- The doctor asks the patient a question. The interpreter and the patient get into a long discussion, while the doctor sits and waits, completely left out. Finally the interpreter turns to the doctor and says "She said no." When the doctor asks exactly what the patient said, the interpreter smiles and says, "Oh, it wasn't important. She just means no."
Do these scenarios worry you? If you are a provider working with interpreters, a patient depending on interpreters, or an administrator responsible for interpreters, they should. These kinds of errors and more are very common among interpreters who have never received any training. While it is common practice in medical centers to grab anyone who professes to speak another language to serve as an interpreter, the risks in doing so are very high. Untrained bilinguals are unaware of the role of the interpreter, the ethics of interpreting, the techniques involved in facilitating a patient-provider communication while staying in the background, the vocabulary involved in a medical interview. Inevitably they make mistakes, and mistakes in a health care setting can be serious, even fatal. For further information: Download our free publication "Guidelines for Providing Health Care Services Through an Interpreter" (PDF File)
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