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Mammoth Hospital provides interpretive program model |
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Friday, 20 November 2009 |
 Members of the California Healthcare Interpreting Association visit Mammoth Hospital’s unique interpretive program. Nelida Garcia, Jose Garcia, Jesús Olivia, Rosario Nevado, Margarita Bekker, Don Schinske, Katharine Allen, Nora Goodfriend-Koven and Charo Velasquez.
Mammoth Times Staff Writer
As anyone who has ever been sick in a foreign country can tell you, things can get unnerving – even terrifying – when you add the potential errors in diagnosis and medication that can occur when patient and provider don’t speak the same language.
For many of Mammoth’s residents, that hypothetical foreign country is Mammoth Lakes. As the town’s Hispanic (Spanish-speaking people from Mexico) population heads upwards of 30 percent of the town’s total population, Mammoth is rapidly becoming a truly biracial town.
The change in demographics has been rapid, and it shows no signs of slowing down. With it comes a new challenge to the town’s healthcare providers – how to accurately serve and diagnose all sick patients, not just the English speaking ones.
“We had 5,700 requests for translation services last year; this year it was 7,500,” said Lori Ciccarelli, Mammoth Hospital’s director of community relations. “That’s how fast the demand is growing.”
Accurate diagnosis is critical for anyone who is sick. But there are other challenges besides translating words; there are also cultural differences that might make it hard to know exactly what the illness might be.
“There are some illnesses that we have words for, such as “empacho” (which is a kind of indigestion accompanied by a series of symptoms), that is going to be hard to explain,” said Nelida Garcia, a bilingual interpreter for Mammoth Hospital and a graduate of the Mammoth school district.
“You can’t just come in complaining of ‘empacho,’ because a provider (who is not familiar with the Hispanic culture) won’t be able to understand it for what it really is,” she said. “The interpreter can’t just translate from Spanish to English in cases like these; they also have to be culturally competent.”
Federal law requires health care providers to provide translation services once there is more than 5 percent of the population that does not speak English as a native language. By 2001, according to Ciccarelli, it was clear that Mammoth was at – and past – this category.
So with the support of the hospital and the board of directors, the hospital started an interpretive services program. In 2004, the hospital hired Garcia as coordinator for the program.
The program has now grown to four full-time employees and seven other employees that do both other hospital work and provide interpretive services when needed.
The program has been so successful it has caught the attention of the state’s health care interpretive society, the California Healthcare Interpreting Association. The association visited the hospital in October, and according to Ciccarrelli, was impressed enough to want to use Mammoth’s program as a model for other programs across the state.
“They had never toured a rural hospital before as a group and were especially impressed with our interpretive services,” she said.
What Mammoth does that is unique is require a lengthy training and testing process for its interpreters, including training in medical terminology and language proficiency testing, she said. Interpreters can be certified at different levels, from those who deal with first time patients to those that work with doctors directly during diagnosis and treatment procedures.
The program is working, according to at least one local professional interpreter.
“Mono County has seen the biggest growth in the Hispanic immigration in all of California and all our local services are challenged by how to deliver services effectively when your client population is changing so quickly,” said Katherine Allen, a past president of the interpretive association.
“Mammoth has, in my view, a model interpreting services program. I have worked with hospitals throughout California and Nevada… and Mammoth’s program is as solid as any I’ve seen.” |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 02 December 2009 )
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