Addressing Language Access Issues in Your Practice: A Toolkit for ...

27 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS
Additional considerations
Language training for physicians
If you speak a non-English language and would like to improve your language skills, there are a variety of opportunities
for further study:
• Language learning, self-study
Language training CDs are useful for daily practice in the car, at home, or during lunch time. Online courses can be
remote or real-time and can be especially useful for physicians in rural areas. A quick search of the web or a trip to
your local bookstore will present you with many choices.
• Language classes, in person and online
If you prefer a more structured language learning environment, try your local community college, or search the web
for online language classes.
• Immersion
The value of an immersion experience is that you are forced to use the language instead of just study it. Language
is, after all, a tool; you will learn a language best when you need the tool to accomplish a goal in which you are
interested.
Most people think of immersion as requiring one to leave the country. While it’s true that a prolonged stay in Costa
Rica will certainly hone your Spanish, ongoing volunteer work at a social service program in a Spanish-dominant
neighborhood of your town or city will also give you plenty of linguistic practice, and with the community which
your medical practice serves as well. There are also immersion courses in the US, for example a Spanish language
immersion program has been developed in Chicago.
Interpreter training
Anyone who interprets, whether a bilingual staff member, a contractor, or an agency interpreter, should receive
basic interpreter training before providing this service. While being bilingual is a prerequisite of being a good interpreter,
it is not enough. Interpreting involves a complex series of skills involving understanding a message and
recreating the same message in a different linguistic and cultural context. It also includes skills for communicating
directly with the people for whom he/she is interpreting, and those related to staying in the background, supporting
the patient/physician relationship, managing the flow of the session, and identifying possible culturally-based misunderstandings.
Trained interpreters make fewer errors, know how to stay in the background, and help the
encounter go faster and more smoothly.
Training programs for foreign language interpreters vary in length, from short 24-hour courses to year-long college
programs. At the time of this writing, there are not yet national standards regarding what constitutes an acceptable
training program for health care interpreters, but there is general agreement that a 40-hour course is a basic introduction.
Courses shorter than that should be considered orientation, not training.
If you are looking for interpreter training for your staff, here are two useful resources:
1) Health Care Interpreter Training in the State of California (Roat, C. The California Endowment, 2002), is
available at http://www.calendow.org/reference/publications/cultural_competence.stm. This
document includes a survey and listing of training programs throughout the state of California.
2) A 2004 update to the list of training programs in the previous study is available from the California
Healthcare Interpreter Association at www.chia.ws. The CHIA website also has information about
other training programs accessible by clicking on “Training and Testing Resources.”