: The Fall cohort of TLC’s MITC program recently completed the 70-hour, 18-week course. 12 people completed MITC, including a high school student and a participant from Argentina. 11 are Spanish speakers and 1 speaks Arabic. 7 counties were represented. TLC’s program prepares students to take the test to become certified medical interpreters through either the CCHI or the NBCMI, the two organizations that certify medical interpreters in the U.S.
TLC’s Genna Linton presented a 4-hour long training to 30 nurses at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The course, “Spanish for Medical Professionals: A Linguistic and Cultural Toolkit,” was focused on words, phrases, and cultural norms to help non-Spanish speaking nurses better relate to non-English speaking patients. This will potentially impact hundreds of patients working with these nurses. Just being able to ask if they are in pain or if they need water in the language the patient understands will improve the quality of care they are receiving.
TLC offered an online webinar in April for Spanish interpreters on the terminology for falls, particularly in regard to Workers’ Compensation cases. The work involves specialized knowledge of both medical and legal terminology. Spanish Interpreters from Tennessee, Louisiana, and New Mexico completed the webinar and are now better able to handle appointments for Workers’ Compensation cases after completing the course, and the clients they are interpreting for are better represented.
Congratulations to the 14 students who graduated from the Tennessee Language Center’s Medical Interpreter Training session on Dec. 13. The students represented 3 states (Tennessee, Alabama, and Oklahoma), 5 Tennessee counties, and two languages (Spanish and Mandarin Chinese). Mandarin Chinese was a new language for TLC and increases our total number of languages served to date from 7 to 8. TLC’s program prepares students to take the test to become a certified medical interpreter through either the CCHI or the NBCMI, the two organizations that certify medical interpreters in the U.S. Find out more about TLC’s medical interpreting program.
Sarah Ryan, Interpretation and Translation Training Specialist, presented a 2-day, virtual medical interpretation training to 13 bilingual Erlanger employees. The training specifically focused on learning and implementing specialized Spanish vocabulary for diabetes, cardiovascular health, and women’s health. This was not a certification course, but certification next steps were discussed for those attendees that were interested.
Congratulations to Dennis Caffrey – instructor, trainer and interpreter for TLC for many years – on being recognized by Hands On Nashville with a Mary Catherine Strobel Volunteer Award for his volunteer work with Siloam Health.
As Siloam navigated serving on the frontlines of the pandemic with an incredibly diverse patient base, Dennis was the steady go-between communicator as staff cared for COVID-19 patients, educated others about the risks of the coronavirus, and eventually began administering vaccines to patients. His help in not only interpreting one language from another but overcoming cultural barriers ensured patients felt comfortable, heard, and that their needs were being met.
Dennis started to learn Spanish when he was 8-years-old, and advanced his knowledge of the language throughout college. Dennis spent 15 years of his Air Force career working in and with Latin America. Shortly after retiring from the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., he and his wife moved to Murfreesboro, TN.
“After about four months of ‘doing nothing,’ I took a course to become a medical interpreter and it was there that I learned about Siloam,” Dennis says. “It seemed like the perfect way for me to share my language and cultural skills while helping our non-English speaking neighbors deal with their health needs. That was by far the best decision I made since retirement.”
Dennis began volunteering with Siloam in 2010, and has been volunteering longer than the majority of Siloam Health’s staff. In 2020, he reached the milestone of 5,000 hours served with Siloam, completing 500 of those last year alone.
TLC, in collaboration with Vanderbilt University Medical Center Interpreter Services graduated eight students from the 80-hour, 15-week program on Thursday, June 3. Languages represented include Spanish, Russian, and Arabic, and participants connected from across the state and beyond.