La Clínica Trains Medical Interpreters
November 11, 2009
Last Friday, October 30th, La Clínica del Pueblo graduated its first group of trained medical interpreters as a part of its Language Access for All program--all bilingual health care professionals from DC. Over ten percent of people in the DC metro area have limited English proficiency. Very few doctors and care providers are trained bilingual medical staff, which can create a divide between patients and their providers. La Clínica currently provides medical interpretation to all Limited English Patients of all community-based health care centers in the District. With this training, funded by the Chronic Care Initiative from the DC Department of Health, La Clínica hopes to increase the capacity of those facilities to better serve their limited-English patients.
La Clinica has also put together an Advisory Committee that will issue recommendations about how to close current gaps in the system and best practices on how to ensure language accessibility for all patients.
"Bilingual staff of hospitals and clinics are often asked to do this work without first, testing their language skills and secondly, without offering them the right training to do this work professionally," noted Isabel van Isschot, project director at La Clinica del Pueblo. "This training also aims to plant a seed, so DC health care facilities take language access more seriously."