Overcoming the language barrier: a novel curriculum for training medical students as volunteer medical interpreters (original) (raw)
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BMC medical education, 2016
Trained medical interpreters are instrumental to patient satisfaction and quality of care. They are especially important in student-run clinics, where many patients have limited English proficiency. Because student-run clinics have ties to their medical schools, they have access to bilingual students who may volunteer to interpret, but are not necessarily formally trained. To study the feasibility and efficacy of leveraging medical student volunteers to improve interpretation services, we performed a pilot study at the student-run clinic at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. In each fall semester in 2012-2015, we implemented a 6-h course providing didactic and interactive training on medical Spanish interpreting techniques and language skills to bilingual students. We then assessed the impact of the course on interpreter abilities. Participants' comfort levels, understanding of their roles, and understanding of terminology significantly increased after the course (p &l...
Barriers to Interpreter Use in the Medical Clinical Encounter
2009
BARRIERS TO INTERPRETER USE IN THE MEDICAL CLINICAL ENCOUNTER. Luz Evelyn Jimenez (Sponsored by William Sledge, M.D.). Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT. The Limited English Proficiency (LEP) population in the United States requires interpreters in order to receive appropriate medical care. However, interpreters are not used consistently in clinical encounters. This study aims to identify the barriers that interfere with providing this service, as well as to propose some possible ways of overcoming these barriers. A systematic review of the literature was conducted using Medline, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and PsycINFO. Twenty articles that presented barriers to interpreter use were identified. These barriers referred to either professional interpreters or ad hoc interpreters, or were general barriers. The barriers to professional interpreter use most frequently identified related to cost. Most of ...
Pay Now Or Pay Later: Providing Interpreter Services In Health Care
Health Affairs, 2005
Research amply documents that language barriers impede access to health care, compromise quality of care, and increase the risk of adverse health outcomes among patients with limited English proficiency. Federal civil rights policy obligates health care providers to supply language services, but wide gaps persist because insurers typically do not pay for interpreters, among other reasons. Health care financing policies should reinforce existing medical research and legal policies: Payers, including Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurers, should develop mechanisms to pay for interpretation services for patients who speak limited English.
Teaching Medical Students How to Use Interpreters: A Three Year Experience
Medical Education Online, 2009
Disparities in health exist among ethnic/racial groups, especially among members with limited English proficiency (LEP). The session described in this paper aimed to teach medical students the skills needed to communicate with patients with LEP. Description Á We created a required session titled ''Cross-Cultural Communication-Using an Interpreter'' for third-year medical students with learning objectives and teaching strategies. The session plans evolved over three years. Program Evaluation Á Students' perceived efficacy using retrospective pre/post test analysis (n 0110, 86% response rate) administered 7 weeks post-session revealed that 77.3% of students felt ''more prepared to communicate with a patient with LEP'', 77.3% to ''give proper instructions to an untrained interpreter'' and 76.4% to ''access a hospital language line''. Conclusion Á Our curricular intervention was effective in increasing students' perceived efficacy in communicating with a patient with LEP, using untrained interpreters and accessing a hospital language line. Skills practice and discussion of using interpreters should be a part of medical education.
Use of Student Interpreters to Serve Limited English Proficient Patients
International Journal of Public Administration, 2004
Changing patient demographics and recently expanded federal guidelines require healthcare organizations to provide improved interpreter services to limited English proficient (LEP) patients. Access to health services for LEP patients has become a controversial public policy issue in the absence of consistent payment mechanisms and policies for recipients of federal funds affected by the guidelines. The experience of one hospital in addressing these new market demands illustrates some of the administrative, policy and educational challenges inherent in healthcare service delivery to LEP patients today. This hospital uses bilingual and bicultural college ORDER REPRINTS students preparing for careers in health care administration as interpreters. Preliminary data indicate that this is a cost-effective arrangement that can serve as a model for other health care organizations serving LEP patients, and as an incremental, operational coping stratagem while the broader policy issues undergo further debate.
Access to Healthcare Interpreter Services: Where Are We and Where Do We Need to Go?
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2010
Due to international migration, health care professionals in Switzerland increasingly encounter language barriers in communication with their patients. In order to examine health professionals' attitudes and practices related to healthcare interpreting, we sent a self-administered questionnaire to heads of medical and nursing departments in public healthcare services in the canton of Basel-Stadt (N = 205, response rate 56%). Strategies used to communicate with foreign-language speaking patients differed, depending on the patient's language. While nearly half of respondents relied on patients' relatives to translate for Albanian, Tamil, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Portuguese and Turkish, a third did so for Spanish, and a fourth did so for Arabic. Eleven percent relied on professional interpreters for Spanish and 31% did so for Tamil and Arabic. Variations in strategies used appear to mainly reflect the availability of bilingual staff members for the different languages. Future efforts should focus on sensitizing health professionals to the problems associated with use of ad hoc interpreters, as well as facilitating access to professional interpreters.
McGill Journal of Medicine, 2020
As the most ethnically diverse metropolitan of the most multicultural country in the world, Montreal's 2016 census profile found its immigrant population to be at a staggering rate of 23.4%, which does not include its second and third generation immigrant population (1). While this diversity undoubtedly gives Montreal its unique charm, it can create social, political, as well as healthcare challenges. Indeed, a majority of our most vulnerable patients include immigrants and refugees.