HERSHEY, Pa. — You’re in a foreign country, unfamiliar with the language and you suddenly are in an emergency room gravely ill. No one speaks your language. You’re frightened, confused and miming your symptoms to a doctor who is actually trying to ask about family history or medication allergies.
This scenario is common for many immigrants to the United States and the health care providers who care for them.
To address this situation, bilingual medical students attending Penn State College of Medicine can now participate in a medical interpreter training and certification program through the Health Federation of Philadelphia.
The program was the result of happenstance when Dr. Patricia Silveyra, assistant professor of pediatrics, biochemistry and molecular biology, and humanities, attended a meeting of the Latin American Medical Student Association where a group of bilingual students questioned why they couldn’t use their second language to help their patients.
“You can’t just show up and translate because you’re bilingual,” Silveyra explained. Medical interpreters require training and certifications, and they need to understand the value of cultural competency.
Because of their interest, Silveyra arranged the training for the students with the hope to increase the number of interpreters for different languages. The College’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion and the Campus Council on Diversity funded the initial program.
Among the first group of students was Colombian born Alvaro F. Vargas, Class of 2017.
“Interpretation is very complex, it’s a lot more than literally changing the words from one language to the other,” Vargas said. “It’s about how respectful you have to be with the privacy and with cultural values of different people.”
Learn more about this program in this Penn State Medicine article.